How could the Law of Nations sanction such a wrong?

Every effort at jurisdiction until that time was usurpation.

In all these cases it is consequently an implied condition, in negotiating with foreign powers, that the treaties concluded by the executive government shall be subject to ratification in the manner prescribed by the fundamental laws of…

The Chief Magistrate can pledge the national faith only according to the Constitution.

It would be more exact to say, ‘from the time at which the treaty is concluded.’ If the political constitution of a party to the treaty requires ratification by a body in the State, the treaty is conditional until so ratified.

The treaty, therefore, had no effect until ratified by the Senate; and I repeat, every attempt at jurisdiction in those waters was a usurpation and an act of violence; I think I should not go too far, if I said it was an act of war.

If a commodore leaves his quarter-deck, pulls ashore, and, with his guns commanding a town, threatens to blow it down, is not this an act of war?

In Great Britain the exclusive prerogative of making treaties is in the Crown, and so in most other countries it is in the Executive; but I need not remind you that in our country it is otherwise.

The exclusive prerogative here is not in the Executive; it is in the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; and until that advice and consent have been given he can exercise no power under that treaty.

Those waters were as sacred as the waters about France or about England.

I have called it an act of war,--war, Sir, made by the Executive without the consent of Congress.

If Congress had declared war against this feeble republic, then it would have been the part of the Executive to carry that declaration into effect; but until then what right had our Executive to do this thing?

None which can be vindicated by the laws of our country, none except what is found in the law of force.

He could not have undertaken to hurl his bolt against this feeble republic without knowing at least what its President had said.

I will not do him the wrong to suppose him ignorant.

Our President joins issue with President Saget; he says that the rejection of the treaty was a “folly.” There you have it.

The President of the Black Republic calls the rejection an act of “good sense” and “wisdom”; the President of the United States calls it an act of “folly.” Am I wrong?

So the two stand, President Saget and President Grant,--President Grant speaking with the voice of forty millions, and this other President, who has less than six hundred thousand people, all black.

If the President of the United States had contented himself with thus joining issue with the President of Hayti, I should have left the two face to face; but, not content with making this issue, the President of the United States proceeds…

The acquisition of San Domingo is desirable because of its geographical position.

San Domingo, with a stable government, under which her immense resources can be developed, will give remunerative wages to tens of thousands of laborers not now upon the island.

San Domingo will become a large consumer of the products of Northern farms and manufactories.

Now any word in a Message, as in a Queen’s Speech, even loosely or inconsiderately proposing anything adverse to the independence of a country, is in the nature of a menace.

This whole measure of annexion, and the spirit with which it is pressed, find a parallel in the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, and in the Lecompton Constitution, by which it was sought to subjugate a distant Territory to Slavery.

And now we witness the same things: violence in a distant island, as there was violence in Kansas; also the same Presidential appliances; and shall I add, the same menace of personal assault filling the air?