I stand here to-night prepared to say, in the connection in which I then used the language, that we have calculated the value of the Union. We calculated it, as I then said, to ascertain how much oppression we could bear before we threw it off. I do not belong to that school of politicians who believe that the Union is paramount to everything else. I put the rights of the states above the Union; I put the sovereignty of the states above the Union; I put the liberty of this people under the Constitution above the Union. All these were above it in the beginning; to all these the Union in the beginning was subordinate; and, so far as I have power, it shall remain subordinate. I can feel a proper degree of devotion to the Union without feeling that all power is concentrated in the Union, that it is paramount, that the states must succumb to it, that the sovereignty of the states must pale in its presence, that the liberty of the people must bow down in the august presence of this Union. I believe no such thing, and will act upon no such principle. The Union was made by the states; it is subordinate to the states; and, within its proper sphere, I will stand by it and make as many sacrifices as anybody else to maintain it. But I will sing no peans to the Union. I do not stand here as its especial and particular eulogist. The rights of my state, the rights of my oppressed section, are worth more to me than the Union. I have said so before, here and at home. I say so now; and, if that is to be disunion, let it be so.

COMMODORE PAULDING'S ARREST OF
WALKER.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 7, 1858, ON THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE RELATIVE TO THE ARREST OF WILLIAM

WALKER.

THIS question, Mr. President, stands where I have apprehended for the last three or four days it would stand. The President of the United States disapproves of the arrest of Walker, and excuses it. He disapproves of it on the ground that the arrest was in violation of law; and if it was, I hold that he has no right to excuse it. If Commodore Paulding had the right to arrest Walker in Nicaragua, his conduct ought not only to be excused, but it ought to be applauded. If, however, he had no legal right to do that act, the President of the republic owes it to the people, whose president he is, to condemn it.

If Walker has been guilty of any violation of law, and has been arrested and brought back to our shores as a fugitive from justice, why is he not put in the clutches of the law? Why is he brought to New York, placed in the hands of the marshal, brought here, and offered to the government, and then set at liberty? Why is he not carried to Louisiana by the same authority which arrested him, and there put upon his trial on this charge of violating the law? Sir, this is a farce being played out before the American people, disreputable to all who are engaged in it. There has been no violation of law. Those who have

trumped up the charge against Walker know that there has been no violation of law. If they believe that he has violated the law, then they are grossly derelict in duty in not returning him to Louisiana, that he may be tried under the law and convicted of the offence whereof he stands charged. But he is not sent there, and that is an admission that he is not guilty, and that a conviction cannot be procured. Then he has not been brought here to answer to any indictment; for if he has, I charge again that those who brought him here are not discharging their duty.

Now, sir, I hold this to be true: that the fitting out of an expedition in violation of the neutrality laws, is one thing; that the voluntary expatriation of a citizen, is altogether another and a different thing. If Walker has fitted out an expedition against Nicaragua, or any other country at peace with the United States, he has violated the law; but if he has girt his arms about him and voluntarily gone aboard a ship going to the coast of Nicaragua, avowing to all the world that he was going there to wage war against the government, I hold he had the right to do so. In that there is no fitting out of an expedition. I hold it to be my right under the law, to-day, to take my musket upon my shoulder, go and tell the President and his Secretary of War, his district attorneys, and his marshals, everywhere, that I mean, thus accoutred, to go and take part against Nicaragua, and they have no power to arrest me. If one has the right to go, two, three, four, five, or even five hundred have the right in the same manner, each going upon his individual account.

I will tell you, sir, where I think the mistake in this whole matter lies. The government is attempting to punish what the law never contemplated should be punished-the intention to fit an expedition beyond the limits of the United States made of materials gathered within the limits of the United States. The expedition must be fitted out here; it must be fitted upon your soil; it must be an entirety, before the law takes cognisance of it. I hold that each individual has the right to go away, and that you have no power to arrest him. The intention to go beyond the limits of the United States, there to fit and equip an expedition, is not a violation of the law. You have in this District a law punishing the intention to go beyond the limits of the District of Columbia to fight a duel; but, until you had that law, parties did go beyond the limits of the District, and did fight duels, without being amenable to your anti-duelling law. It is your last anti-duelling law that takes cognisance of the intention, and punishes it. So, sir, if you had a law to punish the intention to take the material from the United States to fit an expedition beyond the limits of the Union, you might get hold of Walker-for that is all that he has done. He has gathered his material in New York, New Orleans, and Mobile, and perhaps other points; he has taken them man by man beyond the limits of the Union, and there fitted out his expedition, and gone to Nicaragua. In that, there has been no violation of law, because there is nothing in the law to punish the intention to fit an expedition, if the expedition was fitted beyond the Union.

I have a word to say, now, as to the conduct of these naval officers. I have as high a regard for the navy, I think, as any other citizen; I honor its exploits in every conflict in which we have been engaged; but

if anything can bring reproach, eternal disgrace, upon the navy, it seems to me that it is this precise transaction. First, we have Commander Chatard, who lets Walker pass him; and then, seeming to have a glimmering of an idea that he had mistaken his duty, he undertakes to recover his lost ground by resorting to all the little, petty, low, dirty, mean attempts that could be invented, to insult him in his camp; evidently, by his own letter, trying to provoke Walker into a conflict, that he might have an excuse to fire upon him. Then Commodore Paulding comes up; and he, a man of ripe years, who might be supposed to know something of his duty under the law, does what all the world knows, and what I need not repeat here, and does it in the most ungracious way. He writes to the government, admitting that he had no instructions to do what he did; but, assuming that Walker and his men were pirates and outlaws, he writes such a letter as ought eternally to fix the seal of disgrace and condemnation on him. His letter, in my judgment, is a disgrace to the epaulets which he wears upon his shoulders.

While I am on this point, I may as well say what I feel and think; that it is high time our naval officers should be confined within the discharge of their duties according to law. There is too much disposition to exceed the law, by one and all of them. In my opinion, the President and no man knows better than he how reluctantly I say so; but I will say what I think, let the consequences be to myself, or anybody else, what they may-would better have discharged his duty to the law, and to the best interests of the country, by pointedly rebuking the lawless act of Commodore Paulding, than by excusing it. Looking everywhere, I see naval officers disposed to exceed their authority. You cannot send one of them abroad to perform the slightest commission, but he gets beyond his instructions, launches into the open sea of extravagance, and entails upon you any amount of expense and trouble.

I am not going into that question; but I could point out instance after instance where this has been the case. It is high time that naval officers should be restrained within the letter of their instructions, and made to feel and know that they must obey the law. The way to make them do it, is not to follow out the advice of the President, and say that the act of Paulding was in violation of the law and then wink at it. That will but encourage a still further violation of the law. I would prefer seeing it punished-summarily and properly punished. It is one of those offences against the laws of the country which demand punishment. The President cannot excuse it on the ground that Nicaragua does not complain. It is not for us to violate our laws when Nicaragua does not complain, and to excuse them when she does complain. Our duty is to the law. If Paulding has discharged his duty according to the law, let him be applauded; and if he has not, let him be condemned.

It is no excuse to me, to say that Nicaragua does not complain. That suggestion opens up a wide field for investigation. I might reply that Walker had been invited into that country to take part in a civil war, that the party with whom he acted had triumphed, that he was lawfully elected president of the republic of Nicaragua, that his government de facto had been recognised by the United States; and that, by the interference of another naval officer, he had been brought out of the country.

True, it was said then that it was a matter of grace to him. How that was, I am not now going to inquire. But he was here claiming to be the rightful president of the republic of Nicaragua. Patriotic mennot lawless and piratical men, as is now charged, but patriotic men-in the Southern and Southwestern States, in the Western and the Northern States, said: "We will join you, and go and help you to snatch back again the rights which have been lawlessly taken from you." I might go into all that, and show that Walker, the recognised de facto President of Nicaragua, was but pursuing, as he had a legal right to do, the recovery of that which had been lawlessly taken from him when he was thus arrested. But all that is unnecessary in this stage of the investigation, the present point being as to whether the President ought to say that Commodore Paulding had violated the law, and then undertake to excuse him for violating it.

If this principle is to be carried out, the execution of the law is to depend on the outside opinion of the executors of the law. If the Executive thinks the violation of the law, in that particular instance, was right, he is to wink at it and let it go unwhipped of punishment. He is only to punish the offender when, in his judgment, the thing was wrong intrinsically. I do not understand that to be the proper obedience to law, nor a proper execution of law. If it can be shown that Paulding acted within the law, either written or unwritten, then let him be excused; but if not, then let him be condemned, whether we applaud his conduct or not. I might think it a very good thing to have some fellow killed that I thought better out of the world than in it; but suppose the assassin goes and puts the dagger in his heart; am I, as judge on the bench, to say to him, "My dear fellow, I cannot exactly say you did right in killing him, because you violated the law; but, inasmuch as I think the rascal ought to have been killed, I will let you go." That will not do. Such logic as that brings us to the end of all law.

For these and other reasons which I may take occasion to assign hereafter, I cannot endorse this message. I am exceedingly reluctant to dissent from any views expressed by the President, and especially so in the present condition of our public affairs; but I care not who is president; when doctrines are promulgated in antagonism to what I believe to be right, I will express the conviction of my own mind.

Upon this point I will do the senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] a little justice. While I did not agree with him in anything that he said, I did admire his spunk in standing up and saying plump out what he thought on the Kansas question.

On the same day Mr. BROWN continued the debate as follows:Mr. BROWN. On the subject of Captain Paulding's ancestry I desire to say a word. He is said to be the son of the Paulding who took part in the arrest of André.

Mr. MALLORY. I did not say he was the son.

Mr. BROWN. I have seen it stated elsewhere that he claimed to be the son. I do not know what other illustrious ancestors he may have had to which the senator alluded.

Mr. MALLORY. He is descended from the Paulding that captured André. What relation he is I do not pretend to say.

Mr. BROWN. Whether he be a son or grandson, a nephew or grandnephew, has, in my judgment, nothing on earth to do with this inquiry. His ancestor did well, did nobly. The question we have to inquire into now, is as to what Paulding himself has done. Has he acted within the limits of law? I understand the senator from Florida to admit that he has not; and yet he undertakes to excuse him on the ground of his illustrious ancestry.

Mr. MALLORY. My friend will excuse me for interrupting him. In the few remarks he addressed to the Senate he said that in making the arrest Commodore Paulding had acted in a most ungracious manner, and that he had entailed disgrace on his epaulets in doing so. had performed the arrest in an ungracious manner, which I presume to mean an ungentlemanly, or unhandsome, or rude manner.

That he

Mr. BROWN. I would ask my friend from Florida whether he has carefully read the letter of Commodore Paulding to the government, in which he charges piracy, lawlessness, buccaneering, and everything else in the whole catalogue of naval offences against Walker and his men.

Now, sir, I have the same authority for saying that the men who were under General Walker's command had rendered distinguished services to this country, which the senator has for saying that the ancestors of Paulding had rendered essential service. I undertake to say that there were men in that command who not only risked their lives, but shed their blood in defence of the American flag, in the late war with Mexico; and yet this man Paulding, whose highest claim seems to be that he has descended from illustrious ancestors, has the audacity, in an official communication to the government, to charge these men with piracy, with buccaneering, with lawlessness, and with all the offences in the whole catalogue of crimes. Upon what evidence? Where is the authority upon which these charges are based? Is there any indictment against Walker for piracy? Is there any charge against him for piracy? Does it rest upon anything else than the mere declaration of Commodore Paulding, in an official communication which has been sent to Congress by the President, thus to be incorporated into the everlasting archives of the government, to live through all time to come?

I say that when Commodore Paulding so far forgets his duty as thus lightly to charge piracy, and buccaneering, and lawlessness, and other high offences, against men who have distinguished themselves in the military service of the country, he does disgrace his epaulets, and ought to have them torn from his shoulders. If there be any indictment against Walker or any man under his command, show it, point to the court where it is; but if there be not, upon what authority does this man Paulding dare to arraign him before the American people and the world as a pirate? I know not how far my judgment may weigh against that of the descendant of the Paulding who captured André, but whatever it is worth, I venture it here, that Walker is not only not a pirate, not a buccaneer, but that he is a man that has violated no law. Put him upon his trial before a fair jury of the country, and my life upon it he will be acquitted. He will be acquitted in Louisiana; he will be acquitted in Florida; he will be acquitted in New York; wherever he can get a fair and impartial trial according to the laws of the country, he will be set at liberty. My complaint against Paulding is, that he makes the charge without proof; and my complaint against the Presi