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PAPERS OF MIRABEAU BuoNAPARTE LAMAR
prohibit the introduction of slavery by an express provision in her constitution. Though foiled at that time in their designs, the friends of abolition have never ceased their assaults upon this species of property, some times insidious & sometimes open, up to the present day; and they are now waging a war of extermination, with a vio- lence and reckless fury, which, if not speedily arrested by some means or other, must, inevitably produce a disrnption of the Govern- ment, and perhaps result in a civil war. It. is impossible that a people with views so adverse, and with feelings so inveterate and hostile to each other, can maintain a political connection which seems to have no other effect than to bind together uncongenial spirits and dis- cordant elements. Without some most extraordinary and unlooked for change in the principles and interests of one or both the parties they must most certainly separate; and so thoroughly impressed are all the south with the certainty as well as the necessity of this event, that a distinguished member in the American Congress, has recently recently [sic] propose an immediate dissolution as the only remedy left for the evils against which the Southern States have so long remonstrated without avail. Yet with all these deplorable facts before us - whilst the south, whose interest and institutions are the same as ours, driven to desperation by the insecurity of her rights - is endeavoring to rid herself of the Northern fanatics, the people of Texas are seeking to form a more intimate alliance -- an alliance with a government upon the very verge of dissolution and with a people whose hatred and hostility to our dearest interests are as open as it is implacable. Although I would "not by any false sensibility or captious excep- tions to petty insults, forfeit a blessing to our Country, yet there are species of national indignities which a proud and spirited people may not bear, and which a patriot, jealous of his Country's as his own honor, should feel bound to resent. Has such indignites been offered to our young and unsullied Republic 1 Let the unhalowed denunciations which have been sent forth against her from the press, the pulpit and the halls of the American Congress, reply to the question. We are not only represented as being a band of des- ·peradoes, linked together for the worst of purposes and polluting the beautiful region we inhabit, but we are notified that a dissolution of the American govt. is preferable to a connection with a people so insensible to guilt and as we are .said to be. The threating language of the ExPresident Mr. Adams on this point is fresh in the memory of us all, and I hope will long be rem~mbercd to the execration of the libellor. Our list of political grievances, set forth in the declara- tion of independence, have been proclaid from the Vatican as hollow and criminal pretences to cover the work of plundrs; whilst it has ben published as the deliberate sentimt of the free States of the American Union, that slavery & fraud constitute the foundation of our revolution and forming the motives which rallied our people round the standard of our Indepednce ought to excite the scorn and indignation rather than the respect and sympathies of civilized nations. These execrable slanders; the offspring of demoniac & fanaticism, are not confined to a small body of abolitionists; but they have been the basis of the legislative action of several of the North-
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