Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/543

 says the people of Georgia would not even wait for overt acts. He thinks they would begin before it came to that. I thinlc there was no danger to be apprehended from the anti-slavery agitation so long as it was confined to such people as those who originated it in the North—a lady or two, and a gentleman or two, here and there. They became objects of importance from the fact that the South, choosing to agitate the matter, came in conflict with them, and gave them prominence, and swelled them into something like a political party, and, after a while, they became imposing in their attitude. But, sir, there were more free-soilers made by the repeal of the Missouri compromise than had ever existed before on the face of the earth. By whom was that appeal brought about? Who produced it?

Sir, I am not afraid of disunion. I do not think there is any danger, though gentlemen may talk. There are a great many very gaseous gentlemen in the South who have a great deal of time to play the demagogue, and to become important street-corner politicians, to talk about it; but there are thousands of men at home at their work, who know nothing and care nothing about what is said in such places and by such persons. These men contrive either to be sent to public assemblies on occasions that can give expression to their opinions, or they send themselves voluntarily, and they assume to represent what is considered an important class in the community. But, sir, they are not going to bring about disunion. An attempt was made in a portion of the Southern country to start a great Southern league, to prepare the public mind for forcing the Southern States into a revolution at any time that might be thought proper; but that league was an abortion; it failed; it may have had one small branch, but it tapered down to the mere point of nothing. That was said to be a great effort. From the fuss it made throughout the South, you would have thought it embodied some great principle; that the South were in imminent danger of destruction, but it happened that the South got along very well, and the Southern league died. That is the way these leagues will go whenever they start, and are brought to the attention of the people. When the people reflect, they will be fu!ly satisfied that it is not a league for the benefit either of them or of their posterity.

I can not for a moment believe that the wisdom of the nation will ever, so long as time lasts, abandon the road of security and safety to it, or that it will ever forget the wise teachings of the fathers. What do you think of the great political leader who will boldly assert that the boys, nowadays, have more wisdom than the framers of the Constitution and the fathers of the Revolution had? Such a sentiment has been enunciated by the author of the Southern league; but how much regard is to be paid to his sanity, or how much respect to his patriotism or his opinions? Sir, what shall be thought when a man profanely derides the memory of our glorious ancestors who established this Union, and consecrated it by their wisdom and by their loyalty and by their devotion to human happiness, and who had the prospective glory of a nation of freemen before them. The idea that an American tongue should be wagged to detract from their high renown and manifest wisdom is sacrilege.

The honorable gentleman supposes that I meant to make a martyr of him, and that I imputed to him treason, and wanted to crucify him. Sir,