Mr. SUMNER. Mr. President, I am sorry that I have given pain to honorable friends. I certainly did not intend it. They suggest that a question has been raised as to the policy of the President. I have raised no such question and have now expressed no opinion in regard to it. The Senator. from Wisconsin dwells on that pointand reminds the Senate that the policy of the President was not in question. I know it was not in question, and therefore I expressed no opinion upon it, for when I speak in this body, I try to speak directly to the question in hand. There was then no question directly before the Senate on the policy of the president. Had there been I should have been ready y to meet it. At the propertime I shall meet it, l fully, plainly, unequivocally, I trust, as becomes amember of this body. The only question then was on the character of the document that had been read; and that I characterized, comend iously, as a whitewashing document, an then my honorable friends rise one after the other, and like 2 lexicographers proceed to give a definition of the wor “w itewash.” I do not accept their definition. I intended no such thin as either the Senfrom Connecticut or the Senfrom Wisconsin attempted to impute. I have no reflection to make on the patriotism or the truth of the POTUS Never in public or in private have I made any such reflection, and I do not begin now. When I spoke, I spoke of the document that had been read at the desk. I characterized it as I thought I ought to characterize it. My memory goes back in this Chamber further than that of many that I see about me. I remember that other scene when a whitewash ing message did come into this body from Frank lin Pierce. We all at that time called it white washing, and I am not aware that anyone even on the other side undertook to play the part that my honorable friends from Wisconsin and from Connecticut now undertake to perform. The message was socalled bemuse we all felt that itwas a whitewashing doeument; and I under took at once today, on listening to the document that had been read at the desk, to characterize it in the very way in which the patriotic rty of 1856 characterized the message of Franklin Pierce.