Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/403

 I hope, sir, that it is not becoming a favored principle at the White House. If it is, not only Texas, but every State in the Union, may tremble for her rights and her institutions.

In March last, by order of the President, the Adjutant-General referred him to the instructions given to General Riley, under date 26th June, 1849, in which this remarkable expression appears: " Such regulations must necessarily be temporary, as they are presumed to be voluntary, and designed to meet emergencies and difficulties which the sovereign power will take the earliest occasion to remove." This was in reference to the rules and mode of governing the people in California, and is here adopted as applicable to New Mexico. What is the sovereign power here referred to? Is it the action of co-ordinate departments of Government? That can not be, for the sole remedy which has been here applied has been the authority of the Executive to his subalterns; Congress has taken no action upon it; the Supreme Court has made no decision, but the President of the United States has exercised the sovereign right of deciding that Texas has no just claim to Santa Fé, and the country east of the Rio Grande, If we will recur to a communication made by Brevet-Colonel Monroe, addressed to Brevet-Major Jeff. Vanhorn, on the 28th of December, 1849, we will find opinions entertained by him then which differed somewhat as to the right of Texas, and evinced a disposition to concede to her the right of civil jurisdiction, until the boundary should be settled between Texas and New Mexico, or tititil instructions to the contrary might be received from superior authority. I will submit the extract: "As no civil jurisdiction has been assumed over this district by the State of Texas, therefore, in order that its inhabitants may have the protection of civil laws and magistrates, it is hereby directed that you sustain the civil jurisdiction of the Territory of New Mexico, her civil officers and magistrates, in the execution of their duties for the protection of persons and property only, under what is called the 'Kearny code,' until such time as Texas shall officially assume civil jurisdiction, or the Congress of the United States finally settle the boundary between Texas and New Mexico, or instructions to the contrary may be received from superior authority." From this extract it must be manifest that the orders then given arose from a full conviction that Texas had rights, and that she had the right to exercise them within that Territory. I will not pretend to account for the change of opinion that came over Col. Monroe, nor will I assert that it was induced by secret or verbal orders. It is sufficient for me to show that, at one time, not only the Administration, but its subalterns and agents, acknowledged the rights of Texas.

It would appear, though, that this was anterior to the exercise of sovereign power—a power of which Texas has but too much cause to complain. Sovereign power does not reside in the White House at the other end of the avenue, nor in the adjacent Department buildings. No, sir; the sovereign power of this Union is shared by every freeman, its embodiment passing through the States from the people; a portion of it is centered in the Federal Constitution, and thereby that becomes the supreme law of the land, and is the only emliodiment of sovereignty. The President is but the agent of the Constitution, and I protest against its violation by his subalterns at Santa Fé. It was an unseemly exercise of sovereign