WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1831-1832
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that brand attach itself to my name. Would it not have been strange that I should seek to dishonor my country through her representatives, when I have ever been found ready, at her call, to do and suffer in her service? Yes. And I trust that while living upon this earth, I shall ever be found ready, at her call, to vindicate the wrongs inflicted upon her in collective capacity, or upon her citizens in their personal rights, and to resent my own personal wrongs. Whatever gentlemen may have imagined, so long as that proud emblem of my country's liberties, with its stripes and its stars, (pointing to the American flag over the portrait of Lafayette), shall wave in this Hall of American legis~ lators, so long shall it cast its sacred protection over the personal rights of every American citizen. Sir, when you shall have de- stroyed the pride of American character, you will have destroyed the brightest jewel that Heaven ever made. You will have drained the purest and the holiest drop which visits the heart of your sages in council, and your heroes in the field. You will have annihilated the principle that must sustain that emblem of the nation's glory, and elevate that emblem above your own exalted seat. These massy columns, with yonder lofty dome, shall sink into one crumbling ruin. Yes, sir, though corruption may have done something, and luxury may have added her se- ductive powers in endangering the perpetuity of our nation's fair fame, it is these privileges which still induce every Ameri- can citizen to cling to the institutions of his country, and to look to the assembled representatives of his native land as their best and only safeguard. But, sir, so long as that flag shall bear aloft its glittering stars -bearing them amidst the din of battle, and waving them triumphantly above the storms of the ocean, so long, I trust, shall the rights of American citizens be preserved safe and unimpaired, and transmitted as a sacred legacy from one generation to an- other, till discord shall wreck the spheres-the grand march of time shall cease-and not one fragment of all creation be left to chafe on the bosom of eternity's waves 1 Congressional Debates (1831-1832), VIII, Pt. 2, pp. 1810-2821. The House voted Houston guilty of a breach of the privileges of the House and sentenced him to be reprimanded by the Speaker. It permitted incorporation of the following protest in the Journal: "In the House of Representatives of Congress, on Monday 14th inst., the following protest of Gen. Houston was presented hv Mr. Archer of Va., and read:
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