also. That vote affirms that the war was unnecessarily and
unconstitutionally commenced by the President; and I will stake my life
that if you had been in my place you would have voted just as I did.
Would you have voted what you felt and knew to be a lie? I know you would
not. Would you have gone out of the House--skulked the vote? I expect
not. If you had skulked one vote, you would have had to skulk many more
before the end of the session. Richardson's resolutions, introduced
before I made any move or gave any vote upon the subject, make the direct
question of the justice of the war; so that no man can be silent if he
would. You are compelled to speak; and your only alternative is to tell
the truth or a lie. I cannot doubt which you would do.

This vote has nothing to do in determining my votes on the questions of
supplies. I have always intended, and still intend, to vote supplies;
perhaps not in the precise form recommended by the President, but in a
better form for all purposes, except Locofoco party purposes. It is in
this particular you seem mistaken. The Locos are untiring in their
efforts to make the impression that all who vote supplies or take part in
the war do of necessity approve the President's conduct in the beginning
of it; but the Whigs have from the beginning made and kept the
distinction between the two. In the very first act nearly all the Whigs
voted against the preamble declaring that war existed by the act of
Mexico; and yet nearly all of them voted for the supplies. As to the Whig
men who have participated in the war, so far as they have spoken in my
hearing they do not hesitate to denounce as unjust the President's
conduct in the beginning of the war. They do not suppose that such
denunciation is directed by undying hatred to him, as The Register would
have it believed. There are two such Whigs on this floor (Colonel Haskell
and Major James) The former fought as a colonel by the side of Colonel
Baker at Cerro Gordo, and stands side by side with me in the vote that