going powers, vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." By this comprehensive grant of power the national legislature has passed laws for supplying the land and naval forces with many things not expressly named in the Constitution. Hundreds of military roads have been made by the troops and otherwise at the expense of the United States; first, for the purpose of facilitating the march of the troops to and from the places of their destination, at the rate of twenty to twenty-six miles a day, when, without such roads, they could not have marched a quarter of the distance without leaving behind them their cannon and baggage-train ; and, secondly, for the use of the constantly-moving families and other travellers to the continually-expanding border of the republic, by which simple process thirteen new States and near thirteen millions of inhabitants have been added to the old thirteen States of the revolution in the last sixty years. Who ever pronounced these miserable roads to be unconstitutional? These roads seldom cost more than at the rate of from fifty to one hundred dollars per mile; and yet these poor roads contributed more to the immediate benefit of the community at large, during a period of peace, than any of our fortifications, which cost from one to two millions of dollars each. Your memorialist is unable to perceive upon what ground a military road, upon which our troops can be marched three hundred miles in one day, can be unconstitutional, when roads upon which they could march but twenty-six miles in a day were constitutional and proper, (more especially when all are made by the troops themselves,) notwithstanding the great difference in the cost of the two kinds of military roads here alluded As it is obvious that the military railroads will enable our young warriors of the central and western States to fly at the rate of three hundred miles in a day to meet the invading foe, the constitutionality of such roads, as “necessary and proper means for repelling invasion," cannot but be admitted by all parties, convinced, as they must be, that we are destined in another war with any European nation to be attacked by fleets propelled by steam power. But if, as your memorialist respectfully asserts, our seaports cannot be defended against an attack by foreign armies, with the co-operation of fleets propelled by steam power, who can doubt the absolute necessity of the proposed railroads and floating batteries? If, indeed, then, they are indispensable, and our country cannot be defended without them, they are strictly constitutional, as the most rigid constructionist will admit. To make use of our common bad roads for marching our volunteers and other troops from the central and western States to our seaports in a state of war, or to continue the use of sails, without steam power, to meet an invading foe with large fleets of steamships of war, would be as unavailing and as unwise as it would be to attempt to extinguish by water carried in a nutshell the flames by which thousands of our houses are doomed to be enveloped in the course of a war when destitute of the proposed means of defence, while possessing the power to obtain the best of fire-engines. to. 24. The apprehended expense of the proposed work constitutes the principal objection advanced by any statesman, or by any man of military mind, whose opinions have come to the knowledge of your memorialist. To this objection it may be answered: First. That the apprehended appropriations to meet the expense will be no more than eleven millions of dollars a year for a period of six years, provided the work is done by the army of the United States, as heretofore suggested. Second. The employment of the army upon the work will be to the officers and men, and to the youth of every State and district through which the work will extend, the best of all possible schools to prepare them for the defence of their country; as the officers and men so employed will have the proud satisfaction of knowing that every day's labor in this essential work of preparation will contribute to increase their moral and physical capacities for usefulness and domestic happiness in peace, and for a glorious triumph over the invading foe in war. Third. In exhibiting the cost of this system of defence, it is gratifying to find that of the $66,000,000, which is the estimated amount required for the seven railroads from the central States to the seaboard and northern frontier, with five floating batteries for the Mississippi river at the passes, and below New Orleans, and five others for the defence of the harbor of New York, more than sixty-three millions of that sum will be expended for materials and work which the interior of the United States will afford. Fourth. The most costly material required for the work will be bar-iron for the railways, and sheeting for the sides and tops of the floating batteries; of this article, not less than 500,000,000 pounds will be needed. This quantity, at four cents, will amount to twenty millions of dollars. Fifth. For supplying the whole of the iron, it is proposed to erect at conve nient places near the site of each one of the seven great railroads a foundery and a rolling mill, for the manufacture of the iron required, upon the same principle that armories are established by the United States for supplying the army and navy and the militia with cannon and small arms. By these works ample supplies of the best of iron may be obtained in season to complete the railroads and floating batteries in the time here suggested. We shall, in this way, lay open to the individual enterprise of the people of the United States rich mines of wealth hitherto but little known; and we shall moreover relieve ourselves of the reproach to which we have for many years been subjected the reproach of sending to Europe and expending there many millions of dollars for iron, whilst most of our States abound with inexhaustible supplies of this valuable metal equal to any in Europe. 25. The great revolution which steam power has produced in its application to everything that is wafted upon the sea and that rolls upon the land, applicable to the attack and defence of seaports, leaves our country absolutely destitute of the means of defence indispensably necessary to the protection of our seaports against any nation or community of men, or pirates capable of attacking us with a respectable fleet of steamships of war, armed with the improved battering cannon of the largest calibre, without floating batteries of sufficient strength and number to enable us to lock up our seaports and railroads extending from the central and western States to the principal seaports, for marching our disposable force and munitions of war of the central and western States, at one-tenth part the expense and one-tenth part of the time that their movement on our present bad roads would cost. 26. The floating batteries here recommended constitute the most sure and economical means for the immediate defence of our seaports in war; and when aided by the proposed railroads, in the rapid transportation of troops and munitions of war from the central and western States to the principal seaports of the Atlantic, southern, and northern States, aided at sea by steamships of war, we shall thus render our means of defence complete and impregnable in war. And on the return of peace, when all other expensive means of defence, such as fortifications, armories, and fleets propelled by wind and sails are useless, then our floating batteries and railroads, turned to commercial purposes, will contribute to deepen our ship channels and to the improvement of our seaports, and afford facilities to our interior commercial intercourse, which it is believed will replace every dollar expended in carrying into effect this system of national defence in from seven to ten years. 27. The floating batteries and railroads, embracing the system of national defence here recommended, which will cost not more than eleven millions of dollars a year for six years, will, it is confidently believed, by the simple process of its construction, contribute more to qualify the army, and the young men of the United States employed upon the proposed floating batteries and railroads, for active military service in the national defence, than they could possibly be qualified by the expenditure of double the estimated amount of the work paid for giving each one of them a complete military education, according to the system pursued at the Military Academy at West Point; as in that system the theory of the art of war alone is acquired, and much of that mere theory is rendered useless by the revolution which steam power has produced in all that relates to the movement of armies and fleets, and the attack and defence of seaports; whilst in the system here recommended, the young student upon the Hoating battery, as well as upon the railroad, is enabled, from the first moment he takes in hand his book to study the theory, at once to combine with it the practical science and manual labor of his profession; and when, at the end of four or five years, he graduates and obtains his discharge, his mind, limbs, and body would be alike improved and invigorated by his having learned how to make and how to wield, and having actually assisted in making and wielding floating batteries and vehicles of land transportation on railroads, with every other preparatory means for rendering them formidable in war and profita ble in peace. This will afford him the happiness of knowing that he has rendered his country much useful public service for the public instruction which will enable him ever after to be in the highest degree useful to his country and his family, in war and in peace. 28. With the floating batteries and railroads here recommended, we can fearlessly and truly say to all Europe, and to all the world, "We ask of you nothing but what is right, and we will submit to nothing that is wrong;" whilst, without the proposed or some such system of national defence, such a declaration might be considered as pure gasconade; as, without floating batteries and railroads to lock up and promptly re-enforce our seaports when menaced by an enemy, it would be in the power of any one or two of the great nations of Europe (with two of whom we have boundary questions to settle) to enter any one or more of our principal seaports, and destroy the richest of our cities in the course of any day or night in the year; and in doing so, to damage our commercial establishments to the amount of more money and property than would thrice defray all the cost of the proposed system of defence. 29. The opinion has been expressed that these railroads will, during a state of peace, produce a revenue that will replace the money to be expended in their construction in the course of seven years after their completion. But should it be twenty, or even forty years, before their annual revenue is found adequate to reimburse the money expended in the construction of the work, this delay will tend to do no wrong or injustice to our immediate or remote posterity. They cannot fail to enjoy, as much we can enjoy, the benefit of our labor for our and their protection and prosperity. But the great question upon which we are now to act is, not whether we have or have not a right to tax our posterity with a heavy debt for a work that will certainly be of great value to us, and which is destined to be, in all human probability, still more valuable to them; but the true question is, whether it is not our imperative duty to do whatever is obviously necessary and proper to secure to ourselves, and also to our posterity, the means of preserving to each and all so deeply interested the blessings of that liberty and independence secured to us by our fathers of the revolution, in the achivement of which a great national debt was contracted for us to pay-a debt which we have most gladly and gratefully paid. And have we not good reason to believe that our immediate posterity will as gratefully pay any such debt which we may deem prudent to contract, to provide for their use and protection, as well as our own, a system of national defence, without which our and their liberty and independence would be left at the mercy of whatever nations of Europe may see fit to hold in their own hands "the dominion of the sea?" This will be attempted, without doubt, by the great maritime nation who first provides for herself a fleet of some fifty or a hundred steamships-of-war, with floating batteries and railroads for securing her own seaports and her interior. This is a measure, however, more likely to be undertaken by some future combination of empires, arrogating to themselves, as the enemies of France did in the years 1814-'15, the title of " Holy Alliance," than by any one nation. 30. Our unnatural mother, England, who has had the address to subsidize most of her neighbors, and to force others to sanction her pretension to the dominion of the sea; and for half a century past to hold in her own hands, amid professions of peace and good will towards us, near a third part of our greatest eastern border State, and to hold several of their and our border savage nations ready to take the scalps of our frontier citizens; that enlightened nation, who has shed more blood than any other, if not more than all other nations, to secure to herself the dominion of the sea, has, it is believed, at this moment, among us organized bands of spies and pioneers, assuming to themselves the plausible character and vocation of "advocates of human freedom," more familiarly called "abolitionists." That this same England will, in due season, avail herself of her newborn abolitionism to secure to herself some favorite scheme of a foothold near us, to the northeast or south of us, or to pay us for our having twice beaten her, and more especially having, with our little giant navy, taken from her the glory of her long contested dominion of the sea, we can have no doubt. Without railroads and floating batteries, such as are here reccommended, with steamships-of-war, Engiand's banner of abolitionism may ere long be planted in Louisiana, and in every other border State upon our seaboard, from Sabine bay to Eastport, Maine. Thus may we soon behold England openly attempting by force to accomplish what her spies and pioneers have long been secretly employed in preparing and hastening, a tragedy of blood and desolation, the elements of which were principally provided and brought hither from Africa, within the last two centuries, by the outrages and avarice of this same England, in her efforts to monopolize the freedom of the seas. The incendiary fires have already been lighted up at Charleston, South Carolina, and Mobile, Alabama, and perhaps some other cities of our southern and eastern border can testify. The system of national defence here recommended will enable us effectually to guard against the apprehended catastrophe, It will do more. It will, when the proper time arrives, enable us effectually to fulfil the apparent destiny by which an overruling Providence has decreed that the African savages should, by the simple though often abused process of the slave trade, with a long continued pilgrimage of slavery which they are undergoing, (a slavery marked as it has been here, ever since the reign of England ceased among us, with a high degree of humanity and benevolence,) when the proper time arrives, namely, whenever, in the next century, our own caste and color shall have increased so as to amount to two hundred millions of free white inhabitants, then it is beleived that our statesmen will see clearly the propriety of preserving every acre of the national domain for the support of our own caste and color; then shall we plainly see, and cheerfully do what we can to fulfil, that apparent destiny-a destiny by which the supposed evils of the slave trade, and of the slavery of the Africans in America, shall eventually contribute to cover that benighted quarter of the globe with all the blessings of civilization and freedom. A consummation not more devoutly to be wished, than it is certainly to be accomplished within the coming century; unless, indeed, the great work is delayed by the lawless interference of the blind votaries of abolitionism, or by the apprehended incapacity of the African blacks for self-government. Be this as it may, our own United States republic of the coming century will, in all human probability before the middle of that century-say 80 or 90 years hence-have it in their power to make, for the first time since our political existence, a fair experiment towards the solution of the long contested problem, involving the question of the utility of Africans when left alone as members of a free civilized community the question upon which their possible capacity for self-government necessarily depends; for we shall then be able to spare from our two hundred millions of free white population a fleet of steamships-of-war, with an army of missionaries and United States volunteers, for the instruction and protection of the numerous savages of Africa: the terms protection and instruction are here employed in connexion with each other, because these two great engines of civilization have always gone side by side, wherever the work of civilization has succeeded best. That complete instruction necessary to all the purposes of civilization and selfgovernment, as we understand it, never was, nor ever can be perfected without military protection. This navy and army of protection and instruction may be accompanied and followed by such detailed corps of the instructed blacks of our country as may be qualified to assist in the great work: these detailed corps to continue, with the consent of their owners, until every black in America shall find a comfortable and a safe home in the land of his fathers. Any other system of abolition would inevitably delay though it might not defeat the accomplishment of the great work of giving civilization and self-government to Africa, and of giving to the United States republic the glory of the achievement-of giving civilization and self-government to two quarters of the globe; first to America, and next to Africa. To secure to ourselves the happiness, the imperishable glory, of giving to America and Africa all the blessings of civilization and self-government, we have only to do that which we are now admonished by every dictate of the first law of nature to do quickly for our own preservation-that which we possess more ample means of accomplishing before the year 1864, than the patriotic people of New York posessed to enable them to complete their magnificent canal before the year 1826-namely, to locate and construct the proposed railroads and floating batteries; as by the simple operation of the execution of this work, we shall insure the instruction of all the young men of our country that may be necessary or desirable as engineers or scientific mechanics to teach millions of the youth of South America and Africa the art of covering their country, as we shall have covered our country, with these essential means of national defence and national wealth. The missionary, whose sacred duty it is to extend to every people the blessings of the Christian religion, may with perfect propriety himself learn to be a scientific mechanic and a practical engineer. He may thus add the attracive power of practice to theory; and to the sublime precepts of Holy Writ, and in teaching men how to live and how to die, teach them also how to preserve unto their country the things that belong to their country; and how to defend and protect the helpless women and little ones confided to their care, in obedience to the solemn mandate which should apply alike to each social and political union most dear to us, namely: "Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." Such will be-and must be-a portion of the glorious results of our carrying into effect the proposed system of national defence. But if we negelet it until the crowned heads of Europe shall have leisure to prepare another holy alliance, with fifty to one hundred first-rate ships-of-war adapted to the action of steam power, we may, possibly in the next ten years, see our foreign commerce under the control of that holy alliance; and if we resist-and who will have the hardihood to say we will not resist?-we may be told by the vain diplomatists of that imperial combinatoin of pirates-"Yankees! the holy alliance is graciously pleased to permit you, with your wives and children, to seek an asylum beyond the Rocky mountains." Otherwise we must subunit to the degredation of seeing all our seaports in the possession of the invading foe; or, of seeing our commercial cities battered down, without the possibility of our bringing to their succor sufficient force in time for their protection. 31. To obviate any such calamity as the foregoing views suggest as possible, your memorialist prays Congress to provide for the construction of the proposed |