Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/235

Rh and love of every American heart. By these associations I adjure you to regard the contract once made to harmonize and preserve this Union. Maintain the Missouri Compromise! Stir not up agitation! Give us peace. This much I was bound to declare — in behalf of my country; as I believe, and I know in behalf of my constituents. In the discharge of my duty I have acted fearlessly. The events of the future are left in the hands of a wise Providence."

A few days after this speech of Houston, a memorial, signed by 3,000 New England clergymen, was presented to the Senate, protesting against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as it related to Kansas and Nebraska. A long and heated discussion followed. Houston defended the right of the memorialists in a lengthy speech.

Prior to the assembling of the second session of the Thirty-third Congress, an event occurred which gave special significance to Houston's subsequent speeches in the Senate. On the nth Oct., 1854, the General Committee of the Democracy of New Hampshire met, and after deliberation nominated as "The People's Candidate," for the office of President of the United States, from March 4, 1857, Gen. Sam Houston, of Texas. In an address prepared by their organ, Hon. Edmund Burke, the fact that the Democratic administration in power had yielded to the agitation which demanded an "unsettling of the compromise measures of 1850," is urged as the cause of defections from the party in the New England, Middle, and Western States; and, it is urged, that nothing can arrest this tendency but "the immediate nomination, by the people, for the office of President of the United States, of some citizen of the Republic distinguished alike for his abilities, experience in public affairs, and unquestionable statesmanship." The propriety of a "people's nomination" is urged from history; that from the origin of the Government, beginning with the nomination of John Adams, the second President, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, had been nominated by a Congressional caucus; the corruption of which system appeared when Wm. H. Crawford, the regular Democratic Congressional nominee, was overwhelmingly outvoted by Gen, Jackson, the people's candidate; and when by Congressional intrigue John Quincy Adams was made President, which led to the popular election in 1828 of Gen. Jackson. As to the proposed candidate, Houston's brilliant military career, as successful as that of Jackson, is traced; to which, far beyond the previous record of Jackson, his civil career is summarized thus:

"Throughout his long career, Gen. Houston has been an inflexible Democrat. He is a disciple of the school of Jefferson and Jackson. He has filled many of the highest public offices, in all which he has acquitted himself with remarkable