WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 184-9
86
surrender of one-third of the State of Texas to the Missouri · restriction to the right of e>..iending slavery into all of the ter- ritory of the United States, is boldly assumed, in defiance of all his previous acts in Congress and the Cabinet. He cared nothing for consistency, principle or precedent. He wanted to create a new excitement at the North, to reproduce at the South. His abstract resolutions for extending slavery ev_ery where, not being ~ufficient, the new question about introduction of slavery into California, a question which will be settled by emigrants to that region for themselves, is seized upon to create and inflame a state of incurable discord between the two sections of the Union by the arraignment of the North upon charges made by a Southern caucus, which he would have tried before a Southern convention. To embody this engine of revolution, has ever been in the scope of Mr. Calhoun's dismembering machinations. The late address prepared by him and signed by a portion of representatives from the South was prefigured as long ago as 1835 in an article of the Charleston Mercury, headed "The Crisis." This article itself bears the stamp of its parentage in every feature, and contains in fact the whole substance of the late address. I must give this epitome, as it opens somewhat more distinctly the designs of the writer than was allowable in a paper designed to implicate per- sons more scrupulous than himself. I gave the extracts to show that agitation in the North is looked to by Mr. Calhoun as an indispensable preliminary to effectuate his revolutionary move- ments at the South. His attempts in 1835 (he expresses the belief) the sister States of South Carolina were not prepared to second. The California difficulty gives him better hopes ; and in his late address he renews the idea that the North's interference with Southern rights "would be, among independent nations, just cause of war," and makes the effort to "place the several States in the relation to each other of open enemies. Extracts "From The Crisis." "The proper time for a convention of the slave-holding states will be when the Legislatures of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York shall have adjourned without passing laws for the suppression of the abolition societies. Should either of these States pass such laws, it would be well to wait till their efficacy should be tested. The adjournment of the Legislatures of the
Powered by FlippingBook