ate upon the Kansas bill, that in
hunting for power and authority he knew but one place to go--to the
Constitution. When he did not find it there, he could not find it
anywhere.

Senator Toombs favored the purchase of Cuba, because he considered it
advantageous to the republic. "I will accept Canada as readily, if it
can be honestly and fairly done," he said. "I will accept Central
America and such part of Mexico as, in my judgment, would be
advantageous to the republic."

The question of the slave population of Cuba should not come into this
discussion, he declared. "I will not trammel the great constitutional
power of the Executive to deal with foreign nations, with our internal
questions; and I will not manacle my country, I will not handcuff the
energies of this mighty republic, by tying up our foreign diplomacy with
our internal dissensions. At least to the rest of the world, let us
present ourselves as one people, one nation." He spurned the idea that
he wanted Cuba to strengthen the slave power in Congress. He said, "Some
may think we go for it because by this means we shall have one more
slave State in the Union. I know that the senator from New York (Mr.
Seward) at the last session alluded to the comparative number of
slaveholding and non-slaveholding States; but I never considered that my
rights lay there; I never considered that I held my rights of property
by the votes of senators. It is too feeble a tenure. If I did, I have
shown by my votes that I have not feared them. Whenever any State,
Minnesota or Oregon, or any other, came, no matter from where, if she
came on principles which were sufficient in my judgment to justify her
admission into this great family of nations, I never refused her the
right hand of fellowship. I did not inquire whether you had seventeen or
eighteen free States. If you had fifty, it would not alter my vote. The
idea of getting one slave State would have no effect on me. But Cuba has
fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of
Mexico, and then the Carribean Sea, a _mare clausum_. Probably younger
men than you or I will live to see the day when no flag shall float
there except by permission of the United States of America. That is my
policy. I rose more with a view to declare my policy for the future;
that development, that progress throughout the tropics was the true,
fixed, unalterable policy of the nation, no matter what may be the
consequences with refe