He held that to be a defensive war, which was waged to sustain what could not be surrendered or relinquished without compromising the independence, the just influence, or even the proper dignity of the State.

Thus he had supported the war with Great Britain--thus in later years he sustained President Jackson in his bold demonstration against France, when that power wantonly refused to perform the stipulations it had made in a treaty of indemnity; and thus he yielded his support to what was thought a warlike measure of the present administration in the diplomatic controversy with Great Britain concerning the Territory of Oregon.

The living and the dead have mutual rights, and therefore it must be added that he considered the present war with Mexico as unnecessary, unjust, and criminal.

His opinion on this exciting question is among those on which he referred himself to that future age which he so often constituted the umpire between himself and his contemporaries.
With such principles on the subject of war, he regarded the establishment of a system of national defence as a necessary policy for consolidating the Republic.

He prosecuted, therefore, on a large scale, the work of fortification, and defended against popular opposition the institution for the cultivation of military science, which has so recently vindicated that early favor through the learning, valor, patriotism and humanity exhibited by its pupils on the fields of Mexico.