Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/216

 of these States and the equilibrium of the great political forces in America." Meanwhile, in Feb., 1848, Louis Philippe was driven from France and the Republic re-established; when, on the 10th April, Houston brought into the Senate a resolution of sympathy with France in her re-establishment of Republican institutions. On May 9th he introduced a resolution providing for the taking military possession, by the United States, of the province of Yucatan, in order to protect the people of that province from the Indians, urging—"We should anticipate other nations in providing this protection"; and he repeated that the annexation of Mexican territory by the United States had been a blessing to the people. He introduced, also, petitions urging measures for the preservation of the Indians. The debate on the Yucatan resolution was for some days discussed; Houston urging that his measures were the only ones that would secure permanent safety and peace. In June, debate was again resumed on the Oregon question, and the debates on this and kindred topics ran parallel. The point of special controversy was the anti-slavery clause in the Oregon bill.

The question of slavery had been feared in admitting Oregon as a Territory. If any laws inserted in the territorial code were in violation of any right granted by the law or Constitution, and by them vested in or secured to citizens of the United States, or any of them, those laws could be revised when the Territory applied for admission as a State. In the debate on the Oregon bill, all leading Northern and Southern Senators were agreed in admitting that the ordinance of Virginia, ceding in 1787, to the United States, her territory north of the Ohio River, had a bearing on territory farther West. Petitions for abolition, the Abolition Convention at Buffalo, could not affect this question. He wished to make his position known, not only on this continent, but that his views should be blazoned forth to the world. Texas, divided by the line of 36° 30 m., had come in, and on it she was willing to stay. Its extension to 42° in Oregon did not affect the Southern States. Thirteen Northern Senators had voted for the admission of Texas, and he was willing to vote for Oregon with slavery forbidden. He remembered the cry of disunion and nullification when the high tariff was imposed. That cry reached him in the wilderness, an exile from kindred, friends, and sections; but it rung in his ears and wounded his heart. Now, however, he was in the midst of such a cry, and he was bound to act as a man, conscious of the solemn responsibility imposed on him. He had heard the menaces and threats of dissolution until he had become familiar with them, and they had now ceased to produce alarm in his bosom. He had no fear of the dissolution of the Union when he recollected how it had