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I take it for granted that those who believe they have a fair record behind, and are willing to stand the test of investigation, have sent in their memorials, and have demanded the investigation; and though Congress might sit until the end of this century, I would give it to them, and give it to them to their heart's content. If a record shall be brought here which will not stand the test, I notify them, I notify their friends, and all the world, that I will discuss their private characters with all the freedom with which I would express my views on a public measure, because they come here to demand it.

I will not assume in advance, by any vote of mine, that the Committee on Naval Affairs of the Senate will not discharge their duty by investigating this matter to the bottom on each man's distinct and separate petition. I think I can see in this whole proceeding here a disposition to get all these officers off by making a general commotion and general row over the whole thing, so that the responsibility shall rest equally alike upon the innocent and the guilty; and those half-dozen or so of innocent men who have been discharged, are to drag the great car which is to carry them all back again to place. I am against that. I believe men have been dismissed who ought to have been dismissed; I believe men have been furloughed who ought to have been furloughed; I believe men have been put on the reserved list who ought to have been put there. That some have been dismissed who ought to have been retained, I have no question. I am for winnowing the whole matter, and for getting the wheat out of the chaff, and taking care of the wheat and throwing the chaff to the four winds of heaven. I do not mean, so far as my vote or my action is concerned, to take all the chaff, with a few grains of wheat, back again.

If I am not mistaken, the distinguished senator from Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] advocated the idea, and certainly made an argument to prove that the whole law might be repealed, with a declaratory clause that things should be restored to their former position; in other words, that you should treat the law as a certain election was once treated in a sister state as though it had never been passed. I shall not take issue with the distinguished senator from Kentucky on a law point; but I wish to make a suggestion. The repeal of the law, with a declaration that things shall be restored to the position which they occupied before the law was passed, could mean nothing else than that the Secretary of the Navy and the President had so bunglingly executed the law that they had thrown things into inextricable confusion, and that therefore it was necessary to rub out all that had been done, and make a new start. What else can it mean but that they not only failed to execute the law in its true spirit, and according to its true intent, but that they have made "confusion worse confounded," so that there is no possibility of making sense out of their proceeding. Sir, when you send an act to the President to be approved, with that implied declaration on its face, do you think he will approve it? Do you think he will go for upsetting all that he has done under the law, when your declaration can amount to nothing else than that his proceeding is so foolish, and so absurd, and so utterly without order, that you can make nothing out of it? I do not know what he would do in such a case. I am not ashamed to acknowledge that my relations with him are not of a character to justify me in representing him here, as I do not represent him; but he is

President of the United States, and I suppose, indeed I know, that he has a full and proper appreciation of the dignity of his position, and of the rights which attach to it. If you should undertake, by an act of this nature, to make him stultify himself, to make him admit, by the approval of your act, that he had so bunglingly executed the law of Congress that the whole thing was thrown into utter confusion, I take it for granted he would say, "I saw clearly through the thing from the beginning; I know what I meant; this is a trick of politicians to get me into difficulty; and I do not mean to put my signature to my own deathwarrant.' I take it for granted he would take some such view as that. Now, sir, I understand that we have already before us, if not directly, at least sufficiently for us to comprehend them, two propositions for getting out of this difficulty. One of them is to keep open the places in the navy that shall be made vacant by death or resignation, to be filled by officers who have been improperly dismissed from the service; in other words, instead of carrying on the line of promotion in regular order, that those vacancies shall be left open, so that men who have been improperly dismissed may be restored. Some senator the other day made a good deal of complaint about the case of Commodore Stewart. It so turns out-and I mention it certainly with as much regret as any other senator can feel that the position from which he was displaced is already vacant. If the President, in his wisdom, should think proper to restore Commodore Stewart, there is the place ready, waiting for him, in consequence of the unfortunate death of one of his associates. Vacancies in the same way will occur in every grade of the service which may be filled by nominations by the President. If this does not satisfy us, another plan is presented of passing a law providing for a sufficient number of temporary captains, commanders, and lieutenants, to take in all who have been unjustly dismissed from the service.

I am ready to go for either of these propositions; I have no choice. between them. If the judgment of the Senate shall be against both, I shall then be ready to go for anything else which shall be suggested from any quarter which shall do perfect and entire justice to all parties; but as I said to the Senate on a former occasion, and as I now repeat, I do not mean to vote to restore things as they stood before the law, even though I may have the power to do it. In the first place, I do not believe you have the power to do it; and if you had, I do not believe you ought to exercise it. If any injustice has been done, at least half a dozen modes may be pointed out by which you can do justice to those who have been wronged. There does not exist, there cannot by possibility exist, any sort of necessity for your repealing the law with the declaration that things shall be restored to the position which they occupied before the law was passed. I felt it due, Mr. President, to the position which I occupied in this matter, in consequence of some remarks which I made on a former occasion, to say this much. I do not think I shall ever allude to the subject again.

Mr. JONES, of Tennessee. I wish to ask my friend from Mississippi a question before he resumes his seat. I do not mean to follow him in his argument. I understand him to assume that this is the act of the President, and that the responsibility is with the President, because all power over the subject is vested in him. His whole argument goes on the assumption that the President is omnipotent in all questions of re

moval, and that therefore the President is responsible for this whole thing.

The senator tells us that there are two remedies. What are they? One, to keep open the vacancies that may occur by death or resignation; and the other, to provide for a temporary increase of the grades of the

navy.

Does not the omnipotence of the President in dismissing apply just as strongly in restoring as in dismissing? What is the use of talking about your remedy when this power of omnipotence has to be consulted at last? I do not believe in the omnipotence of any man; but if the President alone is responsible for this proceeding, being omnipotent in removals, he is equally omnipotent in restorations and nominations.

I can tell my honorable friend, however, that the President is not so omnipotent as he supposes. That was manifested in the case of a very great and good man, for whom I cherish as kind feelings as any senator on this floor, and more so than some do. The contest with him showed that no president can be considered omnipotent. Have you not seen promotions in the army of the United States suspended here for two or three years, on the single application of one man? Where, then, is the omnipotence of your President? Have you not seen nominations sent here, and sent back to him, and returned to us, and sent back to him again, and kept in abeyance until the voice of the sovereignty of the states of this Union was heard in the confirmatory power of the Senate? He is not omnipotent; and so far as I am concerned, I shall never surrender that question; I will never vote to confirm one man whose nomination he sends here until I think the injured men have had a fair hearing. The Senate have refused, on many occasions, to confirm nominations; they have a right to refuse again; and the omnipotence of the President is not an argument that extends far with me.

Mr. BROWN. I said nothing about the omnipotence of the President. With all due deference to the acumen of my friend from Tennessee, I must say that I said nothing from which, in my opinion, he could have drawn any such inference. I spoke of the President's powers under this law. I said that the law itself gave him the right to approve the action of the board, and that until it was approved by him, it amounted literally to nothing. If the President had chosen to withhold his approval from the action of the board, things would have stood precisely as they did before the law was passed. If he had chosen to approve in part, and to disapprove in part, it was his right to do so. My position was, that the action of the board amounted to nothing without the approval of the President; that it was simply an advisory body; and that therefore the censure heaped upon the board was unjust in every sense of the term.

The senator from Tennessee says, he will not vote to confirm nominations. Possibly, I may agree with him in that respect. That it is the right of the Senate to reject the nominations, one and all, is true beyond all controversy. The question beyond that is, as to the position in which you will leave the navy if you do reject the nominations which the Presi dent has made to fill the vacancies which have been occasioned; and when the first nomination shall be taken up for confirmation, it will be time enough to discuss that proposition. The dealing which we have now, is not as to the point whether we will confirm nominations, but it

is, as I understand the discussion to-day, as to whether the whole censure of this proceeding shall rest on the board for having made certain recommendations which the President has approved.

Now, sir, we all know perfectly well that it is the right of the President to remove men from office-a right which he exercises every day in civil life. He removes a foreign minister, or a cabinet minister, or the collector of one of your important ports, or any other officer that you choose, or whole scores of them together; and he sends in nominations of gentlemen to take their places: is it your right to demand of the President why he made those removals? No. If you think the removals have been made from improper motives, and without just and proper reason, you may reject the successor and leave the office for the time being vacant; but you cannot, I maintain again, demand of the President why he made the removals. That attempt was tried during the days of "Old Hickory," and he resisted it, and very properly resisted it, as an encroachment on his rights as the executive of the nation; and he never would assign reasons why he dismissed anybody from office. He would not do it because you had no right to demand it. You had no right to demand it in matters relating to offices in civil life; and if you had no right to make the demand in such cases, I maintain that you have no right to make the same demand in reference to men in the navy or army service. You may, as the senator from Tennessee suggests, refuse to confirm the nominations of the successors of those removed. That is your privilege, and that is the whole extent of it. If fail to be satisfied that the man was removed for proper cause, you may, on that account, if you choose, refuse to confirm his successor, and leave the office vacant. That is your privilege; but it is the privilege of the President to give reasons for the removal, or to refuse to give them, according as he thinks proper. This is my understanding of the rights of the different departments of the government.

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BADGER AMENDMENT.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 20, 1854, ON THE BADGER AMENDMENT.

THE honorable senator from North Carolina having felt it his duty to give to the Senate and the country the reasons which influenced him, and which, in his opinion, justified him in moving the proviso when the Nebraska bill was under consideration, and the two distinguished senators from South Carolina and Virginia having justified themselves before the Senate and the country in voting for that proviso, I wish to say a word in justification of myself for having voted against it.

I was one of five southern men who recorded their votes against that proviso; and though I had stood alone in the Senate, I should have voted against it. When I was called upon first to vote for the Nebraska bill, I understood that its only dealing with the Missouri compromise was

to repeal it. And the reason given for that repeal was, as I understood it, that originally it had been passed in violation of the Constitution, and in derogation of the rights of the southern people. This being so, a returning sense of justice, as I supposed, had induced our northern brethren to come forward to strike it from the statute-book. That, I understood to be what Congress was called upon to do, and all that it was expected to do. If that had been done, and nothing more, we should, in my judgment, have been restored to the position which we occupied before the passage of the Missouri act. Upon what ground does the South claim its repeal, and upon what ground is it conceded to us, let me ask honorable gentlemen? We claim its repeal, because originally, as I said before, it was passed in violation of the Constitution, and in derogation of our rights; and it is to be repealed, that we may be restored to the rights which we had before it was passed. If we are not restored to those rights, I submit to you, Mr. President, and to the country, the repeal of it is not worth a rush to us. Why should we work ourselves into a passion, excite the country, and revive all this slavery agitation upon a mere abstraction? and I hold that it is an abstraction, unless we are restored to the rights we had in the territory before the passage of the Missouri compromise. If we get nothing by the repeal, why repeal it? I dare say that the Nebraska bill stands, in the minds of southern people to-day, as it stood in yours and mine at the beginning as a simple proposition to repeal the Missouri compromise, and nothing more. When the distinguished author of the bill [Mr. Douglas] came forward with his amendment-the one which the senator from North Carolina read this morning, and which I would reproduce if I had it before me*--I hesitated long as to whether I would vote for it. It was doing a little more than I felt we had contracted to do in the begining; but finding older senators, men of more experience, more learning, more ability in every way, disposed to go for it, I finally gave up my objections.

I hesitated, sir, because, among other things, I saw in it a departure from the original liberal and just purpose of restoring us to the position we had before the act of 1820. If we had the right to introduce slaves into this territory before the restriction act of 1820, the repeal of that act would have restored us to that right. The amendment moved by the senator from Illinois seemed to me to be a denial of that restoration. But, as this construction did not meet the sanction of older senators, 1 abandoned it. My anxiety to act in harmony with my southern friends gave an easier impulse to my decision. Imagine my surprise when 1 heard the senator from North Carolina gravely contending that the amendment proposed by the senator from Illinois precluded the idea of restoring the South to its original position, and that his proviso only expressed, in language more distinct, what had already been expressed in adopting the amendment of the senator from Illinois.

Allow me to say, Mr. President, that I by no means concur with the senators from North Carolina and Virginia, that this bill is all the South has ever asked. If their reading of it is correct, it falls immeasurably

*This is the amendment alluded to:-"It being the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

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