Some leading Democrats, including ex-President
Van Buren, have taken this same view, as I understand them; and I adhered
to it and acted upon it, until since I took my seat here; and I think I
should still adhere to it were it not that the President and his friends
will not allow it to be so. Besides the continual effort of the President
to argue every silent vote given for supplies into an indorsement of the
justice and wisdom of his conduct; besides that singularly candid
paragraph in his late message in which he tells us that Congress with
great unanimity had declared that "by the act of the Republic of Mexico,
a state of war exists between that government and the United States,"
when the same journals that informed him of this also informed him that
when that declaration stood disconnected from the question of supplies
sixty-seven in the House, and not fourteen merely, voted against it;
besides this open attempt to prove by telling the truth what he could not
prove by telling the whole truth-demanding of all who will not submit to
be misrepresented, in justice to themselves, to speak out, besides all
this, one of my colleagues [Mr. Richardson] at a very early day in the
session brought in a set of resolutions expressly indorsing the original
justice of the war on the part of the President.
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