WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1849
85
State pride of the young republic in the act of blending itself with the confederacy. Yet Mr. Calhoun chose rather by an act of supererogation, to apply a restriction of Congress not meant to be executed, and mutilate a Southern State, and suppress in a large portion of it the domestic institution sanctioned by its laws. Nevertheless, he condemns the Senator from Missouri and myself for assenting to an act of Congress simply confirming in a Northern territory the government organized there by the people themselves excluding slavery, according to the principles and precedents which every territory similarly situated had before adopted, with the universal sanction of the representatives in Congress of every State in the Union. If assenting to the or- ganization of Oregon, and recognizing the right which she asserted under the ordinance of 1787, makes me an offender against the South, did not all the senators and representatives from that quarter, offend in the same way in regard to Wisconsin and Iowa? And, most of all, Mr. Calhoun himself, who, twice as a Cabinet officer, and again as a Senator representing Soutn Carolina, had admitted the constitutional power of Congress to repress slavery even in territories where it had a legal footing? But if any one be surprised at the relapse into which Mr. Calhoun has suddenly fallen on the subject of slavery, let him look for a parallel to the previous excesses in opposite directions on other great matters to which his ambition had hurried him. The slave question is one of immense import to the south. It not only involves millions of property, but of lives. Every fibre of the heart of those among whom slavery exists may be tortured by apprehensions and jealousies, through suggestion of an eminent public man \vho takes upon himself the character of sentinel to watch and avert the lurking dangers that environ it. The man who stands guard over a magazine in a populous city, may sacrifice the most innocent, against whom he can point a suspicion of a plot to fire it. Mr. Calhoun takes on himself this charge, in regard to the explosive materials of the South, for such sinister purposes alone. This vigilant guardian of Southern rights, who as has been seen, was ever ready to barter them, to attain his selfish ends, is now laboring to make more intense than ever the excitement on the question of slavery, agitating the right of extension, both at the north and south upon new and mm~t ultra grounds. In his resolutions upon the subject, introduced since his
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