Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/624

 than to arouse the passions of the people and drive them into the Southern Disunion movement; for if you can make the people believe that the terrible accounts of abolition plots here are true, they will be ready for anything, sooner than suffer their continuance. Who are the men that are circulating these reports, and taking the lead in throwing the country into confusion? Are they the strong slave-holders of the country? No; examine the matter and it will be found that by far the large majority of them never owned a negro, and never will own one. I know some of them who are making the most fuss, who would not make good negroes if they were blacked. And these are the men who are carrying on practical abolitionism, by taking up planters' negroes and hanging them. They are the gentlemen who belong to the duelling family that don't fight with knives, but choose something that can be dodged. Some of them deserve a worse fate than Senator Wigfall would visit on me; and, sooner or later, when the people find out their schemes, they will get it. Texas can not afford to be ruined by such men. Even the fact that they belong to the Simon Pure Constitutional Democracy will not save them.

I look around me and behold men of all parties. I appeal to you, old line Whigs, who stood by him of the lion heart and unbending crest, gallant Henry Clay. I ask you, did you ever hear from his lips a word disloyal to the Constitution and the Union? Did he ever counsel resistance to the laws? Gallantly he led you on, inspired you with devotion to his fortunes and principles. When defeat overwhelmed you and him, did he ever seek to plunge the country into a revolution? In all that glorious career did Henry Clay ever utter a word of treason? No! There was a broad spirit of nationality pervading his life. While unbending, so far as his political views were concerned, there was a conservatism in his character which elevated his patriotism above considerations of party and made him a man for the whole country. You may say I was opposed to Clay while he lived. True, I was on questions of ordinary politics; but the barriers of party never divided us when the good of the country was at stake. There were national issues when his great mind bent all its energies for but one end, and that the glory and perpetuity of the Union. There were corr^mon sentiments, which had come down from the patriots of the revolution and the founders of our Government, to which he and I could subscribe. Whenever these were at issue, 1 beheld him the champion of the Union driving back its foes by the power of his eloquence. Would that the tones of that voice of his could once more fall upon the ear of the people and thrill the national heart. Treason, secession, and disunion would hide themselves as of yore. He was the Ajax whose battle-axe glistened aloft in the thickest of the fight for the compromise of 1850. Whenever we saw his helmet plumes proudly waving, we knew that the battle was going well. Old Whigs recollect who were his foemen then! Behold them now swelling the ranks of disunion! With the memory of your gallant leader before you, will you go with them? I stood with Clay against Yancey and his coadjutors. The same illustrious Wigfall, who now denounces me as a traitor upon my native soil, then proclaimed Houston and Rusk as traitors for their support of that measure. But the people condemned them, just as they will condemn them now. The conservatism of the land rose against