By official position and by well-known relations of friendship you enjoy opportunities which I entreat you to use for the good of your country, and, may I add, for the benefit of that party which has so justly honored you.

Go to the President, I ask you, and address him frankly with the voice of a friend to whom he must hearken.

Am I wrong in holding up this negotiation, which has in it so much of violence,--violence toward Dominica, violence toward Hayti?

No prudent man buys a lawsuit; but we are called to buy a bloody lawsuit.

Are we ready to enter upon this bloody dance?

Vain to set forth, as the Message does, all manner of advantages, “commercially and materially.” What are these, if Right and Humanity are sacrificed?

What are these without that priceless blessing, Peace?

It is the honor and good name of the Republic, now darkened by an act of wrong.

If this territory, so much coveted by the President, were infinitely more valuable than it is, I hope the Senate would not be tempted to obtain it by trampling on the weak and humble.

The island of San Domingo, situated in tropical waters, and occupied by another race, of another color, never can become a permanent possession of the United States.

You may seize it by force of arms or by diplomacy, where a naval squadron does more than the minister; but the enforced jurisdiction cannot endure.

Already by a higher statute is that island set apart to the colored race.

It is theirs by right of possession, by their sweat and blood mingling with the soil, by tropical position, by its burning sun, and by unalterable laws of climate.

San Domingo is the earliest of that independent group destined to occupy the Caribbean Sea, toward which our duty is plain as the Ten Commandments.

Kindness, beneficence, assistance, aid, help, protection, all that is implied in good neighborhood,--these we must give, freely, bountifully; but their independence is as precious to them as is ours to us, and it is placed under the…

I protest against this legislation as another stage in a drama of blood.

I protest against it in the name of Justice outraged by violence, in the name of Humanity insulted, in the name of the weak trodden down, in the name of Peace imperilled, and in the name of the African race, whose first effort at…

I know that I have pursued a patriotic course, always just and considerate to the President; and I tell the Senator from Michigan, who has served with me so long in this Chamber, that he does me great injustice.

I might take up every point of his speech and show you the wrong that he did me.

I wish all the documents now on the files of the State Department and of the Navy Department spread before Congress and before the country.

Now, Sir, no Senator complains because we protect the nerve of iron; but the Senator from Vermont registers complaints because it is proposed to protect the much more delicate nerve of gold.

What is worth doing is worth well doing; and if it be worth while to organize the finances of this Republic by the proposed banking system, it is worth while to do it well; and can you do it well, if, at the very moment of its…

Pray, Sir, tell me what policy justifies such exemption which is not equally strong for the exemption of shares in the national banks.

It is strange that the vast sequestration of the national stocks from State taxation should have been made with so little doubt, when Senators question so pertinaciously this smaller sequestration.

If you allow the State to interfere with the proposed system by taxation in any way, may they not embarrass it?