Page:Webster and Hayne's Celebrated Speeches.djvu/104

100 attention. Some did not believe it, and some were too much engaged in their own pursuits to give it any heed. They had gone to their farms or to their merchandise, and it was impossible to arouse any sentiment in New England or in Massachusetts that should combine the two great political parties against this annexation; and, indeed, there was no hope of bringing the northern democracy into that view, for the leaning was all the other way. But, sir, even with whigs, and leading whigs, I am ashamed to say, there was a great indifference towards the admission of Texas with slave territory into this Union. It went on. I was then out of Congress. The annexation resolutions passed the 1st of March, 1845. The legislature of Texas complied with the conditions, and accepted the guaranties; for the phraseology of the language of the resolution is, that Texas is to come in “upon the conditions and under the guaranties herein prescribed.” I happened to be returned to the Senate in March, 1845, and was here in December, 1845, when the acceptance by Texas of the conditions proposed by Congress was laid before us by the president, and an act for the consummation of the connection was laid before the two houses. The connection was not completed. A final law doing the deed of annexation ultimately and finally had not been passed; and when it was upon its final passage here, I expressed my opposition to it, and recorded my vote in the negative: and there the vote stands, with the observations that I made upon that occasion. It has happened that between 1837 and this time, on various occasions and opportunities, I have expressed my entire opposition to the admission of slave states, or the acquisition of new slave territories, to be added to the United States. I know, sir, no change in my own sentiments or my own purposes in that respect. I will now again ask my friend from Rhode Island to read another extract from a speech of mine, made at a whig convention in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the month of September, 1847.

Mr. here read the following extract:—

“We hear much just now of a panacea for the dangers and evils of slavery and slave annexation, which they call the ‘Wilmot Proviso.’ That certainly is a just sentiment, but it is not a sentiment to found any new party upon. It is not a sentiment on which Massachusetts whigs differ. There is not a man in this hall who holds to it more firmly than I do, nor one who adheres to it more than another.

“I feel some little interest in this matter, sir. Did not I commit myself in 1838 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely? And I must be permitted to say that I cannot quite consent that more recent discoveries should claim the merit and take out a patent.

“I deny the priority of their invention. Allow me to say, sir, it is not their thunder

“We are to use the first and last, and every occasion which offers to oppose the extension of slave power.

“But I speak of it here, as in Congress, as a political question, a question for statesmen to act upon. We must so regard it. I certainly do not mean to say that it is less important in a moral point of view, that it is not more important in many other points of view; but, as a legislator, or in any official capacity, I must look at it, consider it, and decide it as a matter of political action.”

Mr. . On other occasions, in debates here, I have expressed my determination to vote for no acquisition, or cession, or annexation, north or south, east or west. My opinion has been, that we have