Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/218

 "He was deeply impressed with the importance of this subject. As in the admission of Texas, the measure had been passed by a small majority. He was actuated by as high, as independent, and as patriotic motives, as any gentleman North or South. He knew neither North nor South. He knew only the Union. Though a Southern man, he would protect the right, and would not suffer it to be encroached upon. He would as ardently defend the North as he would protect and support the rights of the South. He believed that on this floor he was the representative of the whole American people. On all occasions he would maintain that position, and he believed the people of Texas would sustain him in it, for they are true to the Union."

On the reassembling of Congress, in December, 1848, at an early day, 12th December, a resolution was offered in the House to transfer to Texas all the territory of New Mexico east of the Rio Grande; an indication that the course of Houston on the Oregon, California, and New Mexico questions was approved. When this measure came up in the Senate, as Houston, prior to the Mexican war, had laid before the Senate the documentary proof that the Rio Grande was the boundary of Texas, when, by the treaty forced upon Santa Anna after the battle of San Jacinto, the independence of Texas was conceded by Mexico, he now took only five minutes to restate his convictions. The result of the Presidential election, which was to bring Gen. Taylor as the Whig candidate into power, and was to induct Millard Fillmore as Vice-President into the seat of presiding officer of the Senate after March 4, 1849, made the winter session of 1848-9 specially uneventful. Houston rested on his laurels won during the previous session.