Page:Texas Declaration of Causes of Secession.djvu/3

 the strongest ties between her and the other slaveholding States of the Confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by the association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slaveholding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States, on the Pacific ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government, to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.

By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens, and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas, to trample upon the Federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and, finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same, as exclusively the property of the Northern States.

The federal government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has, for years, almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our borders; and, more recently, against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State Government has expended large amounts for such purposes, the Federal government has refused re-imbursement therefor—thus rendering our condition more insecure and harrassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.

These and other wrongs we have patiently borne, in the vain hope that a returning sense of justice and humanity would induce a different course of administration.

When we advert to the course of individual non-slaveholding States and that of a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa, by solemn Legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly, violated the third clause of the second section of the fourth article of the Federal Constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby