records of the country, to punish the presumptuousness of expressing
an opinion contrary to his own?
What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this Expunging
resolution? Can you make that not to be which has been? Can you
eradicate from memory and from history the fact that in March, 1834,
a majority of the Senate of the United States passed the resolution
which excites your enmity? Is it your vain and wicked object to
arrogate to yourselves that power of annihilating the past which has
been denied to Omnipotence itself? Do you intend to thrust your
hands into our hearts, and to pluck out the deeply rooted convictions
which are there? Or is it your design merely to stigmatize us? You
cannot stigmatize us.

"Ne'er yet did base dishonor blur our name."

Standing securely upon our conscious rectitude, and bearing
aloft the shield of the Constitution of our country, your puny efforts are
impotent; and we defy all your power. Put the majority of 1834 in one
scale, and that by which this Expunging resolution is to be carried in
the other, and let truth and justice, in heaven above and on earth
below, and liberty and patriotism, decide the preponderance.

What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by the
Expunging resolution? Is it to appease the wrath and to heal the
wounded pride of the Chief Magistrate? If he be really the hero that
his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all
grovelling sycophancy, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He
would reject, with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your
black scratches and your baby lines in the fair records of his country.
Black lines! Black lines! Sir, I hope the Secretary of the Senate will