Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/646

 haven of safety, in which we are secure, happy, and prosperous, and risk our all upon the uncertainty of an untried experiment, which seems only to open the door to revolution and anarchy? Could we for a moment entertain such a maddened thought, we need only extend our imagination across the Rio Grande, and there, exemplified to a small extent, behold the effects of secession and disunion. A disregard for constitutional government has involved Mexico in all the horrors of civil war, with robbery, murder, rapine, unrestrained. There it is simply civil war, brother armed against brother, partisan against partisan; but to us it would be all these, added to the combined efforts of the powers of tyranny to crush out liberty.

A responsibility rests upon us, because our advantages, arising from self-government, and a more perfect freedom than any ever enjoyed, render us the more accountable.

I need not call the attention of the Legislature to a period so recent as the annexation of Texas to the American Union. The feeling that prevailed in the community in anticipation of that event, and the ardent desire for its consummation in almost every heart in Texas, can testify to the sincerity of our people when they took upon themselves the duties of citizens of the United States. A generation has not half passed since the great object was accomplished; and are we to be seduced already into any measures fraught with principles that would involve us in the inconsistency of impairing the integrity of our formation, and that, too, when it would involve us, in my opinion, in the crime of raising our hands against the Constitution and the Union, which have sheltered and defended us, and w^hich we are solemnly bound to support and maintain?

The good sense of the nation can not overlook the fact that we are one people and one kindred; that our productions, occupations, and interests are not more diversified in one section of the Union than another. If the vain hope of a Southern Confederacy would be realized upon the basis of all the slave States, there would soon be found enough diversity of Northern and Southern interests in both sections to accomplish another division, ail the more eagerly sought, because of a recent precedent.

Indeed, if peaceable separation were possible, no confederacy could be formed upon any other principle than that of leaving domestic institutions— where the Constitution of the United States now leaves them—to the States individually, and not to a central government. I have been no indifferent spectator of the agitations which have distracted our councils, and caused many patriots to despair of the Republic. But I am yet hopeful, and have an abiding confidence in the masses of the people. I can not believe that they will suffer scheming, designing, and misguided politicians to endanger the palladium of our liberties. The world is interested in the experiment of this Government. There is no new continent on earth whereon to rear such another fabric. It is impossible that ours can be broken without becoming fragmentary, chaotic, and anarchical. I know of no confederacy with other States which could hold out greater inducements or stronger bonds of fraternity than were extended to us in 1844. The people of Texas are satisfied with the Constitution and the Union as they are. They are even willing to enlarge it by further wise, peaceful, and honorable acquisitions. If there is a morbid and dangerous sentiment abroad in the land, let us endeavor to allay it by teaching and cultivating a more fraternal feeling.