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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
No. 914 [1838? Dec. 10?, nL B. LAMAR, HOUSTON]. NOT'ES [FOR THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS?] ON THE ANNEX.A.TION OF TEXAS 17 My objections to the unqualified Union of Texas to the United. States of America, proceed chiefly from the difficulties involved in the nature of the sucerity which is to be furnished by that Government for the preservation of the institution of slavery, upon which our character prosperity and happiness as a free people must necessarily depend. Although not sensible of any advantage either civil, political or commercial, which is to accrue to the Republic from the proposed annexation, yet should Texas, contrary to my expectations, be admitted to a full and unrestricted membership with such guaran- tees as she may deem assential to the undisturbed enjoyment of her property and the product of her labor, I stand pledged to cooperate either individually or officially with the friends of the measure; But as the advocate of our peculiar institutions-looking upon them as the sheet anchor of our Liberty, and safety I cannot seek or desire the connection without some additional guarantee stronger than the feeble & inefficient one afforded at present by the national constitu- tion. At this moment the Southern States of the American Union alarmed for the safety of their property are demanding a convention of the Federal members to provide for the immediate and more certain protection of the institution of slavery. Should this Conven- tion assemble and the idemnity thereby secured, the people of Texas might then feel less apprehension in the acceptance of an invitation to enter the Federal comp.at. The warmest advocates of annexation could not desire an alliance upon any other terms. I have on this subject no local attachment or sectional antipathies either to bias my judgment or influence my counsels. I claim my birth place .among the people of the South, but I can never forget that the inhabitants of the North, are American Citizens, descended from the same common ancestry, speaking the same language, in the enjoyment of the same liberties & laws. My objections to an Union 1 of Texas with the Northern States do not therefore arise from sec- tional prejudicies, but flow from a deliberate conviction that no identity of interest or attachment of feeling can ever exist between political bodies which do not harmonize upon the great question of Slavery. It is then from the fanaticism, and not from the people of the North that I would escape. Having been an attentive observer of the course of events in the United States upon the exciting topic of abolition, it is with no ordinary degree of sorrow I announce my solemn conviction that a dissolution of the American Union must take place- at an early day if the Anti-slavery party continue to press their views upon the con- sideration of the National Councils. This exciting discusson was first in.troduced into the American Congress by a resolution of the sate of New York, instructing her senators to vote .against the admis- sion of Missouri into the federal Union unless she would agree to 11 Portions of this draft are in the hand of W. Jefferson Jones.
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