sure, so important to Southern interests, he followed it with a resolution-which was agreed to-requiring the Committee on Agriculture to inquire into the expediency of making a specific appropriation of seed-sugarcane for gratuitous distribution to the sugar-planters.

Mr. Slidell introduced the bill appropriating $300,000 for the purpose of opening and keeping open ship-channels, of sufficient capacity to accommodate the wants of commerce, through the Southwest Pass and Pass à l'Outre, leading from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. The bill also proposed to appro. priate $330,000 for continuing the improvement of the channels at the mouths of the Mississippi River,—the money in both cases to be expended by the Secretary of War. The bills passed, but were vetoed (May 19, 1856) by President Pierce. The President held that the Constitution did not confer power on the General Government to make such appropriations, and that the assumption of authority to commence and carry on a general system of internal improvements was in other respects prejudicial to the several interests and inconsistent with the true relations one to another of the Union and the States.

In fulfilment of the constitutional requirement that a vetoed bill shall be reconsidered in the House in which it was originated, the "Mississippi River Bill" was made the subject of interesting, discussion. Senator Toombs addressed the Senate in support of the President and in opposition to the constitutionality and expediency of works of internal improvement. Senator Benjamin was in favor of the bill. The condition of the admission of Louisiana into the Union was that no tonnage-tax should ever be charged on the Mississippi River. An appropriation was necessary to keep the channel open, as being common to all the Territories of the United States: the navigation of the mouth of the river cannot be taxed. Senator Butler held that there was nothing to prevent Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana from entering into a compact to open it if they thought it important. Senator Crittenden thought that a Government which could collect money unlimitedly, and appropriate none of it for the improvement of the country, was in a poor condition. The reason in reference to the building of fortifications was to him equally forcible for the making of advantageous improvements at any

point of the country. Mr. Toombs held that, as the bill legislated for a portion only of the country, the whole people ought not to pay for it. Senator Weller, of California, thought that Toombs's doctrines would make the Government an impracticable machine. Senator Bell, of Tennessee, spoke in favor of removing the river-obstructions, considering the vast valley and the whole interior between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies that was interested. Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, would vote for any measure of this character. We had the largest tonnage in the world; and he believed it to be the duty of the Government on the Atlantic coast, on the Gulf coast, on the lakes, on the Pacific to protect and defend our commerce. Senator Mason, of Virginia, defended the veto at considerable length, and was gratified that the President had exercised his constitutional duty in sending the bill back to Congress. Senator Cass, at considerable length, opposed the veto and the views of the President in reference to the bill under debate, and the general policy intimated by him with reference to appropriations for river and harbor improvements.

While Senator Slidell had never doubted that a general system of internal improvements not of a national character was at variance with the spirit of the Constitution, he found great difficulty in defining the line where the national character of improvements ceased and the local character began. Such a line was necessarily shadowy and arbitrary, varying according to the latitude of individual opinion. He had regarded certain expressions of the President, in his message of the 30th of December, 1854, as tantamount to an intention to give his assent to appropriations for river or harbor improvements. On this impression he had acted. He found nothing in the present veto message to change or even qualify his opinion as to the constitutionality or expediency of his bill. It was eminently national. He instanced the fact that the great apostle of strict construction-Mr. Calhoun-admitted by his vote in March, 1847, the constitutionality and expediency of an appropriation for the improvement of the Ohio River below the falls at Louisville, and that at the celebrated Memphis Convention, where his views were given at great length, he declared appropriations for the improvement of rivers running through three or more States to be constitutional.

Senator Slidell reminded the Senator that the Mississippi was the natural outlet, wholly or partially, to the ocean, of fourteen States and three Territories, and that a commerce of more than two hundred millions passed over the river which his bill intended to deepen. Though according all respect to the President as the official leader of the party to which Mr. Slidell had been consistently and steadfastly attached, he regretted the implied slurs on Democratic Senators in the veto, and repudiated them as unfounded in fact. The Senate-July 7, 1856-passed the bill by yeas 31, nays 21; and the House did the same on the next day.

Senator Slidell is not in favor of reopening the African slavetrade, and has taken pains to have himself set right before the country on this question. In the first session of the ThirtyThird Congress, Senator Slidell submitted a resolution recommending the abrogation of the eighth article of the Ashburton Treaty, providing for the maintenance of a naval force on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave-trade. This having occupied the executive session and the Committee on Foreign Relations, and the course of the Senator from Louisiana having been often misrepresented by report stating that he had introduced an entering wedge for the re-establishment of the African slave-trade, he, on the 26th of June, 1856, denied the truth of the rumors, and, by permission of the Senate, quoted a brief report made by him on the subject on the 13th of June, 1854.

After stating the terms of the treaty, Mr. Slidell's report enumerates the immense cost of life and money, with the trifling result, of the squadrons on the coast of Africa. The United States contingent was four vessels and eighty guns, at an annual cost of about $10,000 per gun. France had had herself released from the original terms of the compact with Great Britain. The select committee of the House of Commons, appointed to investigate the question, elicited the fact that the present system was futile, that the slave-trade was not regulated by the squadron, but was dependent on the commercial demand for slaves, and that the total result during twelve years was the capture of fourteen slavers; after which statements, the report says:—

"The African slave-trade has, it is believed, been entirely suppressed in Brazil; and in this hemisphere the remaining colonies of Spain-Cuba

and Porto Rico-are its only marts. Your committee think that, if the American flag be still employed in this nefarious traffic, now prohibited by every Christian nation and surreptitiously tolerated by Spain alone, the abuse can be more efficiently corrected by the employment of our cruisers in the vicinity of those islands.

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'It would seem to be almost superfluous on the part of your committee to say that, in recommending the adoption of the resolution under consideration, they repudiate the most remote intention of relaxing, in any degree, the stringency of our legislation on the subject of the African slave-trade. Its continuance, while it is so justly odious on moral grounds, is in every way prejudicial to our commercial and agricultural interests."

Among other matters of interest initiated by Mr. Slidell were the publication of the report of the Japan Expedition; a movement in favor of Americans abroad being privileged to worship, marry, and bury their dead according to the dictates of their own consciences; and a resolution for making some permanent provision to recompense those who may rescue the lives of passengers and crews of American vessels.

In the Thirty-Fifth Congress the increasing power of the Senator from Louisiana was felt in the discussion of the leading Administration measures. In the exciting debate which lasted through the night of the 15th of March and up to half-past six of the following morning, he participated and for some time presided. On this occasion he gave his views on the Lecompton question.

Senator Slidell had reluctantly voted for the bill of February, 1856, not because he disapproved of the principle on which it was based, but because he was opposed to the admission of any new State until it had at least a population entitling it to one Representative in the House. He had yielded, however, to the expediency expressed by the majority, and especially to the judgment of Senator Douglas, "whom all,” he said, were then proud to recognise as the leader and champion." He voted for the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, and, in explanation, said he had not then, and never had, any strong hope that slavery would be permanently established there. He based his course on the obligations assumed in 1854 and 1856, and thought that good faith demanded his advocacy of “Lecompton." Should Kansas be refused admission under that

instrument, he would be convinced that, whatever might be the pretext, the real motive for her rejection was that she had presented a Constitution recognising slavery. This would be the unanimous interpretation of the South; and the slaveholding States could have "no reliance for safety in the future but on stern, uncompromising adherence to the absolute, unqualified principle of non-intervention on the part of Congress in the question of Slavery." The case under discussion imperatively demanded the application of this doctrine, because the "Lecomptonites" were contending for an abstract principle, while the "Anti-Lecomptonites" would derive all the party advantages of the admission of Kansas. The principle might be barren of present benefit, but it was indispensable for future protection. If Kansas was refused admission because slavery nominally and temporarily existed there, what opposition might not be expected when a Territory in which it is a reality shall apply for admission into the Union? Senator Slidell did not believe in the assurances constantly made that there was no reason for Southern apprehension. He saw them constantly falsified by the votes of Senators; he saw the scale of political preponderancy rapidly gravitating in favor of free States; and he had heard the prognostications of Senator Seward, to whom he paid a courteous compliment, but in whose very moderation of manner he beheld a most dangerous enemy. He expressed his devotion to the Union and the Constitution, regarded with contempt the slang phrases with which Northern legislators attempt to stigmatize Southern men, and denounced those who desired to keep up agitation against the Lecompton Constitution as "plotting and unscrupulous politicians." He would vote for the amendment of Senator Pugh, recognising the right of the people of Kansas, with the assent of their Legislature, to alter, amend, or remodel their form of government within the demands of the Constitution of the United States. "The amendment," said Senator Slidell, "will not be in any sense a Congressional interpretation of the Constitution of Kansas, but a mere declaration that it is not our purpose, even by implication, to impair or limit the rights of the people of that State."

On this exciting topic the number of speeches on all sides was immense; and, amidst the mass that then issued from the press,