Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/427

 of Florida constitutional? I think not. Yet we retain it as one of our States, Was the acquisition of Texas constitutional? No, sir, it was not. It was a mere act of legislation on the part of this Government—a compromise—precisely such as the compromise which this bill proposes to repeal. But Texas is in, and you can not tlirust us out; and that is the whole of it. But it is not constitutional. If it is not, and validity attaches only to compacts, in contradistinction to compromises, then this is a compact predicated upon the compromise of Missouri.

I do not know whether it is constitutional, technically. It is sufficient for me to know that it has stood for more than thirty years, and received the approbation of our wisest and ablest statesmen, from the day of its adoption down to the present, and was never questioned until after the commencement of the present session of Congress. It is strange that an unconstitutional law should have remained so long in force amid all the agitation, and excitement, and bitterness between the North and the South; and that this is the first proposition ever made to repeal it. Have we to yield to it without any necessity, and without any excuse for it, when we see that discord will run riot in our land?

Sir, the occasion to which I have alluded, was not the only one on which I said I was willing to stand on the Missouri Compromise line, in defense of the rights of the South. On another occasion, it will be recollected in this Chamber, when speaking of the obligations the country was under to a distinguished statesman, then in private life, and whose party had postponed his claim, or pretermitted it, or, in common parlance, laid him on the shelf, I said, that when the Missouri agitation was quieted, he was held throughout the land as a great pacificator; and if he had committed a mountain of sins, that single achievement of tranquillizing the great Republic, giving permanency, peace, and growth to its institutions, would have overbalanced them all. I said that Henry Clay deserved a monument of bronze, of marble, or of gold, to be placed in the rotunda of the Capitol, for men in aftertimes of great excitement to contemplate, and look upon as a man who blessed his country. That was the sentiment I entertained, and it arose from veneration, not only for the man, but for the needed restoration of harmony to our native land. Were I to make such a declaration now, it would be thought that it was an endeavor to bring this bill into discredit. No, sir, nothing is necessary from me to discredit it; for it is its own condemnation under the circumstances in which it is presented here, at this time, in the midst of unity, peace, and harmony, while all is at rest, with not a ripple on the vast ocean of our community. I have seen agitation and bitterness before.

I recollect when I ventured to make the first address in this Chamber on the subject of the agitation in 1850, with what discountenance it was received. So little was there a disposition to harmonize, that when I suggested that six Senators, without regard to party or section, might be selected from the members of this body, who could compose an Address and send it abroad so as to harmonize the country, and hush the fierce waves of political agitation that were then lashinig the base of this Capitol, it met with no response. Well, we subsequently obtained peace and harmony. Let us preserve it. And there is no mode by which we can so effectually accomplish that object, as by rejecting the proposed measure. I had fondly hoped, Mr. President, that having attained to my present period of life, I should pass the residue of my days, be they many or few, in