Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/642

 enemies of the Constitution back to duty, and the Federal Government cease to protect them, the pathway of revolution is open to them.

To guide us in our present difficulties, it is a safe rule to borrow experience from the sages and patriots of the past. Beginning with the father of our country, and great apostle of human liberty, George Washington, I am happy to find my opinions on this subject have the sanction of all those illustrious names which we and future generations will cherish so long as liberty is a thing possessed or hoped for. In his farewell address, he says:

"The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence—the support of your tranquillity at home and your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that from different causes and from different quarters much pains will be taken—many artifices employed, to weaken your minds in the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed—it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your National Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it, accustoming yourself to think and speak of it as the palladium of your political safety and prosperity— watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety—discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate one portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts."

It must be recollected that these sage admonitions were given to a people, and to the sacred cause of liberty, to which a long life of arduous toil and unselfish devotion had been given. Temporary excitement, fanaticism, ambition, and the passions which actuate demagogues, afforded no promptings to his fatherly teachings. They were those of a mind which felt that it was leaving a rich heritage of freedom to posterity, to whom was confided the worthy task of promoting and preserving human freedom and happiness.

Next among the patriot statesmen who devoted their lives to the achievement of our independence as a nation, is to be mentioned the venerated name of Thos. Jefferson. In relation to the subject of secession and disunion, we find the following expression of his patriotic feelings. In June, 1798, at a time when conflicting elements seemed, in the estimation of many, to portend disunion, he wrote:

"In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent disunions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or a shorter time. Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch and debate to the people the proceedings of the other. But if, on the temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no Federal Government can ever exist. If, to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the New England States, alone, cut off, will our nature be changed? Are we not