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of this army, shall defer to you, the chief clerk of the Department of State, the question of continuing or discontinuing hostilities."

Upon this point, sir, have to state that the order conveyed to you in the letter of the Secretary of War, did not originate with that officer, but emanated from him, who, if the constitution of the United States be anything but an empty formula, is "the commander-in-chief" of "this army," and of the whole armed force of the United States, in whatsoever quarter of the globe it may be directed to operate. In the present instance, this fact is positively known to me, and had it not been so, I should still, slight as is my acquaintance with military affairs, have taken it for granted, for I do not recollect ever to have heard of an instance, in which an important order issuing from the War Department, above all, one manifestly founded upon executive determinations respecting our foreign relations, was ascribed to any other source, or in which a disposition to treat such order with contempt sought to shelter itself under any such cover as the pretence that it was regarded as the mere act of the Secretary of War.

Commodore Perry, to whom the same identical order was issued through the Navy Department, and with whom I had a conversation on the subject, did not see in it anything at all extraordinary. This, however, may have been caused by his being less habitually vigilant of, or less gifted with discernment in regard to, the honor of his branch of the public service. Or, perhaps, this want of penetration on his part may be attributable to his not having equal reason for believing his own personal consequence to be so excessive, and the influence of the Secretary of the Navy to be so overwhelming, that for the mere sake of affording indulgence to the personal envy and malevolence of the latter, in the very vilest shape in which these base passions can manifest themselves, a most important measure of the government (belonging obviously to the branch of publie duties appertaining to the Department of State, and having no reference to the functions of the War Department) was deliberately planned and decided upon, and a confidential diplomatic agent despatched post haste from Washington, with a communication for the Mexican government.

Thus much in regard to the author of the degradation supposed by you to be involved in this order. With respect to the degradation itself, and the imagined necessity of your deferring to me on "a military question," the following passage in my instructions (instructions which, in making the full explanation referred to in my first letter, it was my intention to submit for your perusal) will suffice. It shows that "the question of continuing or discontinuing hostilities," so far from having been in any manner committed to my discretion, is one which the President, in the discharge of the duty which he owes to our country, has judged proper to reserve entirely to the chief executive authority of our government: "If the contingency shall occur, on the happening of which, as provided by the third article of the proposed treaty, hostilities are required to be suspended, you will, without delay, - communicate this fact to the commanders of our land and naval

forces, respectively, the Secretaries of War and of the Navy having already issued orders to them for the suspension of hostilities, upon the receipt of such notice from yourself."

It is here seen, that the object of the order, thus provisionally issued to the commanders of our land and naval forces is, simply, that they shall cease to wage war upon Mexico, on the occurrence of a certain contingency. This contingency, as it was intended that you should be fully informed, by the exhibition of the proposed treaty, immediately upon my reaching head-quarters, is, the ratification, by the Mexican government, of a definitive treaty, establishing peace between the two countries. No power or discretion whatever-no shadow of any such thing, is vested in me, with respect to the suspension of hostilities. So far as this measure is connected with my mission, or can by any possibility grow out of my mission, it cannot take place except upon the occurrence of a state of things strictly defined by the President. A treaty of peace and amity, such as I am empowered to make, must first be concluded, and not only concluded, but ratified by Mexico; and then, upon notice of this state of things, given by me to the respective commanders, the order for the suspension of hostilities is to come into force, this order being the President's order, emanating from him, through the appropriate departments, and not my order. To represent it as mine, strikes me as being no less obviously erroneous, than it would be to state that the generals of the army under your command had been subjected to the authority of your aids-de-camp, and required to "defer" to them, because you had issued an order requiring the former to execute a particular movement, previously prescribed by yourself, whensoever they should receive from the latter a notice or direction to that effect. And the error would be no less palpable, if, instead of the course pursued by the government, in issuing to yourself and to Commodore Perry the provisional order which you have received, the President had judged it to be expedient and necessary that you should never hear of the proposed treaty until it should have been ratified on the part of Mexico, and I had been instructed then to notify this fact to you, and to require you, in his name, to suspend hostilities.

So long, then, as the two countries shall continue to be in a state of war, the operations of our forces in Mexico cannot, by the remotest possibility, be affected by the fact that I am charged with the duty of making that notification. So far as those operations are concerned, the case now stands, and cannot but continue to stand, precisely as if negotiations for peace had taken place at Washington, and as if no order for the suspension of hostilities. had issued until after those negotiations had been brought to a successful close. The only difference which can result from our government's having a diplomatic representative on the spot, is, that the restoration of peace may possibly be thereby hastened. And the only difference made by this agent's being instructed to give notice of its restoration, (instead of waiting till this could travel from Mexico to Washington, and back again from Washing

ton to the army,) is, that the calamities of war would be arrested a month or two, or more, the sooner and that this very consideration might, in itself, be the cause of peace, by determining the enemy to conclude a treaty which, otherwise, he would be unwilling to enter into. On your part, sir, above all other men, this certainly could not be objected to; for, unless my memory deceives me, our batteries before Vera Cruz were, in your official despatch, reported as being in "a state of awful activity," an epithet which struck me at the moment as being a somewhat unusual one in artillery technicals, although the National Intelligencer very soon afterwards accounted for it to my entire satisfaction, by the assurance which it gave our country, that you are "distinguished for humanity," an assurance which receives the strongest possible corroboration from the little word thus inadvertently dropped from your pen

In a word, sir, the course determined upon by our government, respecting the suspension of hostilities, is what any man of plain, unsophisticated common sense would take for granted that it must be; and it is not what your exuberant fancy and over cultivated imagination would make it. The question truly presented by it, and it would require very skilful sophistry, indeed, to make our country believe that this could be otherwise than obvious to any man occupying your position, is not whether the immediate command and direction of the United States forces in Mexico is to continue to reside in the senior officer of the army present, or is to be transferred to some person not belonging to the army. The question is, whether the government of the United States is to be permitted by General Winfield Scott to discharge its international functions and duties in its own way, and by agents of its own selection, when he may have taken a fancy to relieve it of the trouble of attending to them, by himself settling the preliminaries of peace, in adjusting the terms of that "armistice" with regard to which he has judged proper so vehemently to assert his own exclusive competency.

It may be remarked, that, even if the order thus prospectively given by the President, instead of having reference to a notice of the happening of a certain anticipated possibility, (which it was deemed expedient and necessary not to refer to specifically in the order,) had directed that hostilities should be suspended upon the receipt of a requirement from a secret and confidential agent of the government; even in this case, a genuine, as contradistinguished from a merely verbal or formalry "respect" for the authority of the constitution, would be likely to suggest to any commander receiving such order and habitually entertaining such genuine sentiment, at least to abstain from all premature determinations to treat it as a nullity. He might, through love of country and forgetfulness of self, make up his mind, should the order take effect under circumstances rendering it destructive of the public weal, then to disobey it. But he would scarcely show haste to make a parade of this determination, or to set to his army an example of insubordination by any unnecessary disclosure of even this contingent intention before those circumstances had become matter of fact and of positive

knowledge, and whilst they had as yet not ceased to be the coinage of an imagination ready to impute to the chief magistrate elected by our country-aided in his deliberations by the eminent citizens whom he had called around him for the purpose-a course of proceeding so imbecile as to awaken surprise that the bare possibility of its having ever been contemplated by them should suggest itself to any sane mind.

With regard to the choice made by the President of the person to be charged with the measures dictated by him for bringing about the state of things whereof notice is thus to be given, I, sir, do not entertain a doubt but that far better selections might have been made; and that it has fallen upon myself solely in consequence of the peculiar circumstances of the juncture. Among these far better selections, the best of all, perhaps, would have been the present commander of our land forces in Mexico. This would have been attended with one advantage, at least, that of precluding all danger of this attempt to restore peace being rendered abortive by collissions in regard to "military rank." But if the President has proved himself not duly sensible of this consideration added to the many others, which should doubtless have weighed with him in favor of the appointment now referred to; and should he hereafter have cause to repent that he did not make it, no part of the blame can. ever attach to me, for he knows that the sin thus committed by him was not in any way participated in by me, except so far as my consent, in reply to his own spontaneously expressed wish, no less undesired than unsought on my part, may have made me one of the guilty

My instructions (which, as has already been stated, I am authorized to make known to you, and had intended to exhibit to you) show that no ground exists, either for the supposition you have made, that the object for which I have been sent here is, to "petition" the enemy to" concede an armistice," or for the apprehension which you express, that the communication from the Secretary of State of the United States of America! to the Mexican Minister of foreign relations, may be of a nature to "commit the honor of" the government of our country; although this patriotic solicitude, most assuredly cannot fail to be duly appreciated by that country, and most especially by all sticklers for military subordination within the army, and for the strict enforcement of the respect due from the military to the civil authority. Equally groundless will be found to be the supposition that "the chief clerk of the Departof State" can have been taken from his desk, and sent to the seat of war in the heart of the enemy's country, "clothed with military rank over" the senior officer of the army of the United States! The propriety of its finding a place in the reply of that senior officer to the communication which, in the discharge of the duties confided to me, I found it necessary to address to him, is a point which does not call for remark from me. The merits of this jeu d'esprit, as a specimen of delicate and refined irony, so peculiarly appropriate, too, in reply to a letter so offensive as mine, I wil lingly leave to the good taste and good feeling of our countrymen.

They will not fail to do justice to it also, as a model of the respect due by all public servants to the office and the authority of the President of the United States.

It

The communication from the Secretary of State to the Mexican minister, in regard to which you express surprise, (or perhaps indignation may be the meaning of your note of exclamation,) that it should have been enclosed to you for transmission "sealed," was so sealed because it was deemed proper that it should bear the seal of the Department of State of the United States; and in this there was no departure from the established practice in similar cases. was intended, however, that you should be made acquainted with its contents, as well as with every thing else relating to the subject, by means of the copy in my possession; and I had supposed that this intention was sufficiently expressed in my former letter,though from the haste in which it was written and despatched, (and which did not allow me to retain a copy,) it was doubtless very imperfect in more than one particular. But, had no such intimation been given, and had no such intention existed, the doctrine which should deny to the government of the United States the right to send to its agents or officers abroad, civil or military, for transmission to foreign governments, any communications which it might be deemed necessary to make, and in such state, sealed or unsealed, as it might be deemed appropriate to the occasion, such a doctrine would, so far as my very limited knowledge extends, be a most extraordinary innovation in the conduct of public affairs. Nothing is more common than to send naval commanders, of any and every rank, to sea with "sealed orders;" which, although addressed to themselves, and relating to public interests entrusted exclusively to them, they are required not to open for weeks or months thereafter, or not at all, except upon the occurrence of a certain contingency. And if this be considered as not affecting their honor, and as not giving them the right to take their government to task, either by the device of notes of exclamation or by less condensed modes of expression, it strikes my poor judgment as following, a fortiori, that no such right can arise from the transmission, through them, of a sealed note to a foreign government, upon matters totally distinct from their own professional duties.

The haste in which the communications for the Mexican minister of foreign relations was despatched to you, arose from the utter uncertainty in which I found myself, whether the state of things then existing in the interior might not be such as to present a crisis, rendering it of the highest importance to our country, and to Mexico likewise, that the moment should be seized for the delivery of that communication. It was the President's intention, when I left Washington, that it should be delivered immediately upon my arrival in this country, and that it should forthwith be placed in the hands of the general-in-chief of our forces for this purpose. By transmitting it to you, and making the intention of the President known, my duty in regard to it is fulfilled. At the same time, had I been aware that the circumstances of the moment were decidedly unpropitious for its delivery, I should have deemed it my duty,

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