Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/231



4th March, 1853, brought in Gen. Franklin Pierce as President; with Gov. Wm. L. Marcy, the controlling mind of the administration, as Secretary of State, Senator King, of Alabama, who had presided with such impartiality and dignity in the Senate under Mr. Fillmore's administration, was elected Vice-President; but his extreme illness and his death on the i8th April, 1853, prevented his taking his seat as President of the Senate. In his absence. Senator J. D. Bright, of Indiana, was chosen President pro tem. Among the new Senators who took their seats in the Thirty-third Congress, which then opened, were: Judah P. Benjamin and John Slidell, of Louisiana; both of whom became eminent and noted after the formation of the Southern Confederacy, From the New England States came two new men, who proved especially able: Wm. Pitt Fessenden, of Maine, and Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts; the latter being preceded for a few months by that model of statesmanlike culture and urbanity, Edward Everett.

During this, the Thirty-third Congress, Houston, whose reputation and influence were now at their height, was especially calm, clear, and dignified in debate. During the Executive session to receive and ratify new appointments made by the President, on April 6, 1853, Houston urged the printing of the Report of Bartlett and Gray, on New Mexico, on the ground that the thirst for such works should be encouraged in the American people. On the reassembling of Congress, the Kansas - Nebraska bill of Senator Douglas, was early introduced, and was urged as an administration measure. On the 15th February, 1854, Houston reviewed his own course as to the Missouri Compromise, which that bill proposed to set aside; with the supposed idea that the territory west of the Mississippi, once belonging to France, would be open for the introduction of slavery. As the bill involved the removal of the Indians, Houston reviewed again his relations to them from 1818. In justifying his course on the Missouri Compromise, he alluded to the fact, that of three hundred men in the Senate and House of Representatives when that measure was finally made effective to the harmony of Northern and Southern interests, only three remained;