Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/532

 New Orleans, by ship or steamboat transportation, all the materials that will arrive from the Pacific coast. If you have anything to transport there, you have all the advantages of embarking them at a point more accessible than the mouth of the Ohio for the people of the North. They have no streams to ascend; but the people of the South have the broad and secure Mississippi, with no impediments, no sawyers, no obstructions, to prevent their reaching the terminus with perfect convenience and security. You can not have access to the North from any other point with the same facilities that you can from this terminus on the Mississippi.

Why rule out this route? Is it not entitled to consideration? Why not give entire latitude to those who are to construct the road, to make their selection? If it is not eligible to make the terminus I have suggested, very well; let them so decide; but I implore you not to disfranchise those who have a right to your consideration as a part of this Union. If this is to be a great national work, give it a national character, and treat it as a national measure for the defense of the Pacific coast. I have always been its advocate. I have seen no constitutional impediment to it. There is none; or else it is unconstitutional to give national defense. The Federal Government is bound to defend the several States, and to give security to them. If they owe it allegiance and loyalty, the Federal Government owes them protection. Can you give protection to California without a direct communication with the Pacific Ocean? You can not. Can you bind them in interest? Can you make them identical with us? Can you bind them in cordiality, in sympathy, and in loyalty, unless you create a bond of this kind? You can not. I wish no portion of this country to be alien to the Union, and I wish to do justice to all. I never could conceive that there was a constitutional impediment in the way of this work. Are we authorized to build forts and fortifications? If we are, are we not equally bound to afford other means of defense? Is not the communication with San Francisco and with the Pacific as important as it is to erect forts here upon our borders, on the Atlantic? Equally important. They are necessary to the protection of our Atlantic coast, and a railroad is indispensable to the protection of the Pacific coast.

I have always been a stickler for strict construction, and I am yet; but I believe whatever is necessary for the salvation of the country is constitutional. There has been no constitutional provision to bring these vast Territories into the United States, and to incorporate them into our Union. The Constitution can not be stretched; it is not a piece of India-rubber; it is a compacted whole, and not to be distended; but whenever you step beyond the Constitution to acquire a dominion, it becomes expedient that you should do something with that dominion; and then it becomes a matter of legislative discretion. That is my opinion about the Constitution and its application to those Territories that have been acquired without its pale and without its provisions. I insist that it would be an act of glaring injustice to this section of the country, possessing the vast and illimitable advantages which it does as a terminus of a road, to exclude it from the common benefits that are extended to other sections of the Union.

Mr. President, as I remarked in the outset, it was not my intention to have uttered one syllable upon this occasion. I have always entertained