Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/385

 Oregon and Texas will be much more natural and convenient than for either separately to belong to the United States. This, too, would place Mexico at the mercy of such a power as Oregon and Texas would form; such an event may appear fanciful to many, but I assure you there are no Rocky Mountains interposing to such a project. But one thing can prevent its accomplishment, and that is annexation. If you, or any statesman, will only regard the map of North America, you will perceive that from the forty-sixth degree of latitude, north, there is the commencement of a natural boundary. This will embrace the Oregon, and from thence south on the Pacific coast to the twenty-ninth or thirtieth degree south latitude, will be a natural and convenient extent of sea land. I am free to admit that most of the provinces of Chihuahua, Sonora, and the Upper and Lower Californias, as well as Santa Fé, which we now claim, will have to be brought into the connection of Texas and Oregon. This you will see, by reference to the map, is no bugbear to those who will reflect upon the achievement of the Anglo-Saxon people. What have they ever attempted and recoiled in submission to defeat? Nothing, I would answer.

Population would be all that would be needful; for, with it resources would be afforded for the accomplishment of any enterprise. As to the proposition that the provinces of Mexico would have to be our own, there is nothing in this; for you may rely upon the fact that the Mexicans only require kind and humane masters to make them happy people, and secure them against the savage hordes who harass them constantly, and bear their women and children into bondage. Secure them from these calamities, and they would bless any power that would grant them such a boon.

The Rocky Mountains interposing between Missouri and Oregon will very naturally separate them from the United States when they see the advantages arising from a connection with another nation of the same language and habits with themselves. The line of Texas running with the Arkansas, and extending to the great desert, would mark a natural boundary between Texas or a new and vast Republic to the southwest. If this ever takes place, you may rely upon one thing, which is this: that a nation embracing the advantage of the extent of seventeen degrees on the Pacific, and so extensive a front on the Atlantic as Texas does, will not be less than a rival power to any of the nations now in existence. You need not estimate the population which is said or reputed to occupy the vast territory embraced between the twenty-ninth and forty-sixth degrees of latitude on the Pacific. They will, like the Indian race, yield to the advance of the North American population. The amalgamation, under the advisement of statesmen, can not fail to produce the result in producing a united government formed of and embracing the limits suggested. It may be urged that these matters are remote. Be it so. Statesmen are intended by their forecast to regulate and arrange matters in such sort as will give direction to events by which the future is to be benefited or prejudiced. You may fully rely, my friend, that future ages will profit by these facts, while we will only contemplate them in perspective. They must come. It is impossible to look upon the map of North America and not to perceive the rationale of the project.

Men may laugh at these suggestions, but when we are withdrawn from all the petty influences which now exist, these matters will be those of the most grave and solemn national import. I do not care to be in any way identified with them. They are the results of destiny, over which I have no control.