Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/243

 "I was not the enemy of slavery, nor was I its propagandist, nor will I ever be. I believe it was the breaking- down of the barrier that secured our institutions in the South, when the Missouri compromise line was abandoned. It was only opening the door to free soil. I wish it to be understood that there are more people in the South than the statesmen and politicians that are seen in her public assemblies. There is a gallant yeomanry, a chivalrous and generous population, whose hardy hands are adapted as well to toiling for the procurement of the necessaries of life and the nurture of their families, as they are to the application of arms to vindicate their rights. They are the men whose voice will be heard when you carry the question of union or disunion to their homes."

On the 23d March, when he was again called out, he said:

"The Legislature of Texas have superseded me in accordance with my wishes, by an election, to take effect March 4, 1859; till then it will be my duty to carry out their wishes. It has always been a cardinal principle of my democracy that when the will of a constituency on any measure is known to the representative, he is bound to execute, in all good faith, that known will; or he is bound to resign his situation, in order that another man may be selected who will carry out their views. I therefore vote for the bill pending, knowing it to be in accordance with the views of three-fourths, at least, of the Legislature of Texas."

On the 20th April Houston was drawn out in the only lengthy speech of this session. The bill proposing a Protectorate of the United States over Mexico and the Central American States, having been objected to, an amendment, omitting the mention of the latter, was pending. Forgetting the relation in which he now stood to his State, animated still by pure devotion to her interests in common with those of the country at large, Houston urged the following considerations:

"Texas is most interested in the proposed Protectorate of the 2,000 miles of the border between the United States and Mexico, for 1,000 miles are on the Texan line. Mexico is both powerless and faithless. I alone, of 261 members of the Senate and House of Representatives, who were present in December, 1823, when the Monroe doctrine was announced, remain here to sustain it. Nearly all who then favored it, Webster, Clay, Benton, and others, are now dead. It was to such men, counseled by a Cabinet of such men as John Quincy Adams, Wm. H. Crawford, John C. Calhoun, Samuel L. Southard, William Wirt, and John McLean, that President Monroe addressed himself in such confident and resolute language with reference to the ulterior purposes of this country. I shall never cease to remember the exultant delight with which his noble sentiments were hailed. They met not only a cordial, but an enthusiastic reception, both in and out of Congress. They were approved with as much unanimity as if the entire population of the Union had been previously prepared to re-echo their utterance. At that epoch there was a broad, towering spirit of nationality extant. The States stood in the endearing relation to each other .of one for all and all for one. The Constitution was their political text-book, the glory of the Republic their resolute aim. Practically there was but one party, animated but by one