Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/643

 men still, to the south of that, and with all the passions of men? Immediately we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Virginia party in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. What a game, too, will the one party have in their hands, by eternally threatening the other, that unless they do so and so, they will join their Northern neighbors. If we reduce our Union to Virginia and North Carolina, immediately the conflict will be established between the representatives of these two States, and they will end by breaking into their simple limits."

And again, after a lapse of nearly twenty years, when the Hartford Convention announced the doctrine of nullification and secession as an ultimate remedy, which we are to-day called upon to indorse, he wrote to the honored Lafayette, who from his home in France began to look with doubt upon the success and perpetuity of the Union which his blood had been spilt to establish:

"The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis. Let them in any State, even in Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of separation, and its citizens will rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own incendiaries."

The particular attitude of Massachusetts at that period called forth these determined expressions from this great champion of American freedom. They are equally applicable to our present condition. The Legislature of South Carolina may have as much mistaken the character of the masses of South Carolina as did the Hartford Convention the character of the masses of Massachusetts. The Hartford Convention became a byword and a reproach. The sons of the men of Lexington and Bunker Hill stamped it with infamy. The people of South Carolina are descendants of those who felt all the throes incident to the Revolution. Her gallant heroes are among the historic names to be revered and cherished. Their generations will not forget the cost of liberty, or the blessings of the Union which it created.

At the time these expressions were used by Jefferson he had retired, and his fame had elevated him far above party politics and partisan feelings. He thought and spoke as one friend would to another, who had passed through the severe ordeal for the attainment of human freedom. He had in truth filled the measure of his country's glory. Such feelings well deserve a place in every true American heart. His teachings surely can not be lost upon the present enlightened generation; nor do we find that other sages and patriots are silent on these topics. In the writings of Mr. Madison we find that after all the arduous toils of a statesman and patriot, when treating upon the subject of the Union and the relative rights and powers of the States, he lends his great light to guide posterity in the pathway of regulated government. Being one of the authors of the Constitution, his exposition comes to us with double force. In a letter to Joseph C. Cabell, written September 16, 1831, he says:

"I know not whence the idea could proceed that I concurred in the doctrine that although a State could not nullify a law of the Union, it had a right to secede from the Union. Both spring from the same poisonous root."

In his letter to Mr. N. P. Trist, written December 23, 1832, he says:

"If one State can, at will, withdraw from the others, the others can, at will, withdraw from her, and turn her nolentem volentevi out of the Union."