Sir, we are in possession, by military power, of New Mexico and California, countries belonging hitherto to the United States of Mexico.  We are informed by the President that it is his purpose to retain them, to consider them as territory fit to be attached to these United States of America; and our military operations and designs now before the Senate are to enforce this claim of the executive of the United States.  We are to compel Mexico to agree that the part of her dominions called New Mexico, and that called California, shall be ceded to us.  We are in possession, as is said, and she shall yield her title to us.  This is the precise object of this new army of thirty thousand men.  Sir, it is the identical object, in my judgment, for which the war was originally commenced, for which it has hitherto been prosecuted, and in furtherance of which this treaty is to be used but as one means to bring about this general result; that general result depending, after all, on our own superior power, and on the necessity of submitting to any terms which we may prescribe to fallen, fallen, fallen Mexico!

Sir, the members composing the other house, the more popular branch of the legislature, have all been elected since, I had almost said the fatal, I will say the remarkable, events of the 11th and 13th days of May, 1846.  The other house has passed a resolution affirming that “the war with Mexico was begun unconstitutionally and unnecessarily by the executive government of the United States.”  I concur in that sentiment; I hold that to be the most recent and authentic expression of the will and opinion of the majority of the people of the United States.

There is, Sir, another proposition, not so authentically announced hitherto, but, in my judgment, equally true and equally capable of demonstration; and that is, that this war was begun, has been continued, and is now prosecuted, for the great and leading purpose of the acquisition of new territory, out of which to bring new States, with their Mexican population, into this our Union of the United States.

If unavowed at first, this purpose did not remain unavowed long.  However often it may be said that we did not go to war for conquest,

          “credat Judaeus Apella,
    Non ego,”

yet the moment we get possession of territory we must retain it and make it our own.  Now I think that this original object has not been changed, has not been varied.  Sir, I think it exists in the eyes of those who originally contemplated it, and who began the war for it, as plain, as attractive to them, and from which they no more avert their eyes now than they did then or have done at any time since.  We have compelled a treaty of cession; we know in our consciences that it is compelled.  We use it as an instrument and an agency, in conjunction with other instruments and other agencies of a more formidable and destructive character, to enforce the cession of Mexican territory, to acquire territory for new