Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/639

 of 1850. These measures were indorsed by the people of Texas through their popular voice at the ballot-box; and as no recent incentive to action on the part of South Carolina appears other than that " the assaults upon the institution of slavery, and upon the rights and equality of the Southern States, have unceasingly continued," the Executive is led to believe that these measures, so emphatically indorsed by the people of Texas, were one, if not the chief of the " assaults " enumerated.

Were there no constitutional objections to the course suggested by the resolutions I cannot perceive any advantage that could result to the slaveholding States, or anyone of them, in seceding from the Union. The same evils, the same assaults complained of now, would still exist, while no constitution would guarantee our rights, uniting the strength of a Federal Government able and willing to maintain them; but an insuperable objection arises in my mind. The course suggested has no constitutional sanction, and is at war with every principle affecting the happiness and prosperity of the people of each individual State, as well as their right in their national capacity.

For years past, the doctrines of nullification, secession, and disunion have found advocates in Southern States as well as Northern. These ultra theories have, at different periods, raged with more or less violence, and there have not been wanting persons to fan the flame of discord, and to magnify imaginary evils into startling realities. Confounding the language of individuals with the acts of Government itself, they who desire disunion at the South are not satisfied with the Constitution fairly and honestly interpreted by the highest court in the country, and the law faithfully and impartially administered by the Federal Government (even to the exercise of all its powers) to protect the rights of property and guarantee the same, are ready to seek relief from abolitionism in disunion.

It is not to be supposed that the people of the South regard the institution of slavery as possessing so little moral strength as to be injured by the "assaults " made upon it by a fanatical element of Northern population, who so long as they stay at home do us no harm, and but excite a pity for their ignorance and contempt for their ravings. So long as a government exists, ready and willing to maintain the Constitution, and to guard every citizen in the enjoyment of his individual rights, the States, and the citizens of the States, may rest secure. Ungenerous and uncharitable as are the assaults made by a class of the North upon the peculiar institutions of the South, they would exist from like passions and like feelings under any government; and it is to the Constitution alone, and the Union possessing strength under it, that we are indebted for the preservation of those separate rights which we see fit to exercise. No matter to what extent these passions may go, the Federal arm is to be stretched forth as a barrier against all attempts to impair them.

It is to be presumed that the raid upon Harper's Ferry, by Brown and his miserable associates, has been one of the causes which have induced these resolutions by the Legislature of South Carolina. In my opinion, the circumstances attending that act have furnished abundant proofs of the utility of our present system of government; in fact, that the Federal powers have given an evidence of their regard for the constitutional rights of the States, and stood ready to defend them. It has, besides, called forth the utterance of the mighty masses of the people, too long held in check by sectional appeals from selfish demagogues.