Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

opinion awarded a preference, were passing away, and when new men, of more equal pretensions, were coming upon the stage. It was tried several times with success and general approbation, public sentiment having been followed, and not led, by the caucus. It was attempted in 1824, and failed, the friends of Mr. Crawford only attending – others not attending, not from any repugnance to the practice, as their previous conduct had shown, but because it was known that Mr. Crawford had the largest number of friends in Congress, and would assuredly receive the nomination. All the rest, therefore, refused to go into it: all joined in opposing the "caucus candidate," as Mr. Crawford was called; all united in painting the intrigue and corruption of these caucus nominations, and the anomaly of members of Congress joining in them. By their joint efforts they succeeded, and justly in the fact though not in the motive, in rendering these Congress caucus nominations odious to the people, and broke them down. They were dropped, and a different mode of concentrating public opinion was adopted – that of party nominations by conventions of delegates from the States. This worked well at first, the will of the people being strictly obeyed by the delegates, and the majority making the nomination. But it quickly degenerated, and became obnoxious to all the objections to Congress caucus nominations, and many others besides. Members of Congress still attended them, either as delegates or as lobby managers. Persons attended as delegates who had no constituency. Delegates attended upon equivocal appointments. Double sets of delegates sometimes came from the State, and either were admitted or repulsed, as suited the views of the majority. Proxies were invented. Many delegates attended with the sole view of establishing a claim for office, and voted accordingly. The two-thirds rule was invented, to enable the minority to control the majority; and the whole proceeding became anomalous and irresponsible, and subversive of the will of the people, leaving them no more control over the nomination than the subjects of kings have over the birth of the child which is born to rule over them. King Caucus is as potent as any other king in this respect; for whoever gets the nomination – no matter how effected – becomes the candidate of the party, from the necessity of union against the opposite party, and from the indisposition of the great States to go into the House of Representatives to be balanced by the small ones. This is the mode of making Presidents, practised by both parties now. It is the virtual election! and thus the election of the President and Vice-President of the United States has passed – not only from the college of electors to which the constitution confided it, and from the people to whom the practice under the constitution gave it, and from the House of Representatives which the constitution provided as ultimate arbiter – but has gone to an anomalous, irresponsible body, unknown to law or constitution, unknown to the early ages of our government, and of which a large proportion of the members composing it, and a much larger proportion of interlopers attending it, have no other view either in attending or in promoting the nomination of any particular man, than to get one elected who will enable them to eat out of the public crib – who will give them a key to the public crib.

      The evil is destructive to the rights and sovereignty of the people, and to the purity of elections. The remedy is in the application of the democratic principle – the people to vote direct for President and Vice-President; and a second election to be held immediately between the two highest, if no one has a majority of the whole number on the first trial. But this would require an amendment of the constitution, not to be effected but by a concurrence of two thirds of each house of Congress, and the sanction of three fourths of the States – a consummation to which the strength of the people has not yet been equal, but of which there is no reason to despair. The great parliamentary reform in Great Britain was only carried after forty years of continued, annual, persevering exertion. Our constitutional reform, in this point of the presidential election, may require but a few years; in the meanwhile I am for the people to select, as well as elect, their candidates, and for a reference to the House to choose one out of three presented by the people, instead of a caucus nomination of whom it pleased. The House of Representatives is no longer the small and dangerous electoral college that it once was. Instead of thirteen States we now have thirty-one; instead of sixty-five representatives, we have now above two hundred. Responsibility in the House is now well established, and political ruin, and personal humiliation, attend the violation of the will of the State. No man could be elected now, or endeavor to be elected (after the experience of 1800 and 1824), who is not at the head of the list, and the choice of a majority of the Union. The lesson of those times would deter imitation, and the democratic principle would again crush all that were instrumental in thwarting the public will. There is no longer the former danger from the House of Representatives, nor any thing in it to justify a previous resort to such assemblages as our national conventions have got to be. The House is legal and responsible, which the convention is not, with a better chance for integrity, as having been actually elected by the people; and more restrained by position, by public opinion, and a clause in the constitution from the acceptance of office from the man they elect. It is the constitutional umpire; and until the constitution is amended, I am for acting upon it as it is.

      CHAPTER XX.

      THE OCCUPATION OF THE COLUMBIA

      This subject had begun to make a lodgment in the public mind, and I brought a bill into the Senate to enable the President to possess and retain the country. The joint occupation treaty of 1818 was drawing to a close, and it was my policy to terminate such occupation, and hold the Columbia (or Oregon) exclusively, as we had the admitted right to do while the question of title was depending. The British had no title, and were simply working for a division – for the right bank of the river, and the harbor at its mouth – and waiting on time to ripen their joint occupation into a claim for half. I knew this, and wished to terminate a joint tenancy which could only be injurious to ourselves while it lasted, and jeopard our rights when it terminated. The bill which I brought in proposed an appropriation to enable the President to act efficiently, with a detatchment of the army and navy; and in the discussion of this bill the whole question of title and of policy came up; and, in a reply to Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, I found it to be my duty to defend both. I now give some extracts from that reply, as a careful examination of the British pretension, founded upon her own exhibition of title, and showing that she had none south of forty-nine degrees, and that we were only giving her a claim, by putting her possession on an equality with our own. These extracts will show the history of the case as it then stood – as it remained invalidated in all subsequent discussion – and according to which, and after twenty years, and when the question had assumed a war aspect, it was finally settled. The bill did not pass, but received an encouraging vote – fourteen senators voting favorably to it. They were:

      Messrs. Barbour, Benton, Bouligny, Cobb, Hayne, Jackson (the General), Johnson of Kentucky, Johnston of Louisiana, Lloyd of Massachusetts, Mills, Noble, Ruggles, Talbot, Thomas.

      "Mr. Benton, in reply to Mr. Dickerson, said that he had not intended to speak to this bill. Always unwilling to trespass upon the time and patience of the Senate, he was particularly so at this moment, when the session was drawing to a close, and a hundred bills upon the table were each demanding attention. The occupation of the Columbia River was a subject which had engaged the deliberations of Congress for four years past, and the minds of gentlemen might be supposed to be made up upon it. Resting upon this belief, Mr. B., as reporter of the bill, had limited himself to the duty of watching its progress, and of holding himself in readiness to answer any inquiries which might be put. Inquiries he certainly expected; but a general assault, at this late stage of the session, upon the principle, the policy, and the details of the bill, had not been anticipated. Such an assault had, however, been made by the senator from New Jersey (Mr. D.), and Mr. B. would be unfaithful to his duty if he did not repel it. In discharging this duty, he would lose no time in going over the gentleman's calculations about the expense of getting a member of Congress from the Oregon to the Potomac; nor would he solve his difficulties about the shortest and best route – whether Cape Horn should be doubled, a new route explored under the north pole, or mountains climbed, whose aspiring summits present twelve feet of defying snow to the burning rays of a July sun. Mr. B. looked upon these calculations and problems as so many dashes of the gentleman's wit, and admitted that wit was an excellent article in debate, equally convenient for embellishing an argument, and concealing the want of one. For which of these purposes the senator from New Jersey had amused the Senate with the wit in question, it was not for Mr. B. to say, nor should he undertake to disturb him in the quiet