The Writings of Sam Houston, Volume V

WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1849

99

acknowledge the connection and the intimation, which you have thus originated, as alike complimentary. If I rightly apprehend his position, it was that of a Unionist, not that of a Di.sunionist. With other patriots of the Revolution, he united in the struggle to achieve and establish the existence and permanence of the Union. To defeat that establishment, the efforts of the Tories of that day were as strenuously directed as those of the Nullifiers and Abolutionists of the present, are to its overthrow. Were I to deduce any conclusions from the character and history of your patriotic ancestor, it would be, that, could he now revisit the earth, he would regard the labors of his distinguished descendant to annihilate the great work, to the successful achievement of which he sacrificed his life, as reflecting but little credit upon his memory. In my humble judgment, the course pursued by Mr. Calhoun, · and the Abolitionists, tend to the same end. So far they are co-workers and confederates. Could their designs be ac- complished, the end would be the destruction of the Union, and the degraduation of the country from its present elevated position, to the control of reckless demagogues; from the en- joyment of liberal institutions, and the government of the free people to a condition of anarchy, weakness, and civil commotion. Whatever may be the gloomy forebodings of some moonstruck seer, or the air-built theories of the abstractionist, for myself, I can perceive no cause to apprehend the reality or approach of forthcoming evils to the people of the South. Is it a serious ground for alarm, that a number of fanatics inhabiting the North, amounting, as is fully ascertained, to not more than one twentieth part of her citizens,-entertain feelings of irrational and phrenzied hostility to the domestic institutions of the South? Are Southern rights and Southern institutions in any real danger of subversion or invasion, from such a source, when it is well known that the vast majority of our Northern brethren are as much opposed to the principles and measures advocated by those fanatics, as the people of the South themselves? Such is the existing reality-such the true condition of affairs. Upon such grounds, the author of the Southern Address, and you as his auxiliary, would fain justify yourselves in a misguided attempt to array the entire South against the entire North, in an attitude

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