I'
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1850
138
personal toward any gentleman who inhabits South Carolina, I will correct him by disclaiming it. Mr. Houston. I believe I am disposed to appreciate South Carolina as highly as any other gentleman. I know her gal- lantry; I know her worth, and the part she took in the Revolu- tionary struggle; but I know that she has, unfortunately, been identified with measures that augured ill for the perpetuity _of our institutions, so far as she was concerned at the time, and that stringent measures were adopted toward her; and I say this without intending to reflect on the people of the State or the honorable gentleman. But, sir, am I wrong in stating this fact, though representing a State younger in the Confederacy than South Carolina, one of the primitive thirteen, glorious and effulgent, rising from all the tempests of the Revolution, and bearing aloft everything that is glorious in the establishment of our free institutions? How could I ever forget South Carolina? Yet, at the same time, if I were to see grounds of objection in her institutions, I might find them in the fact that I do not admire all her constitutional pro- visions. Not a man in South Carolina ever voted for Governor, nor has he ever voted for a Presidential elector. The choice is confined to the Legislature of the State, and this does not accord with our theory of free Government. While I laud the patriotism of the people, I deplore their misfortunes and their curtailment in liberal democracy. Mr. Foote. I hope my friend will pardon me for asking of him an additional explanation. I trust he did not intend to insinuate as matter of opinion, still less to make the statement as a matter of fact, derived from any authority, that the sovereign State of Mississippi, in the incipient movement towards the National Convention, for which she is responsible, was instigated by South Carolina or her statesmen; or that she ·acted otherwjse than upon her own unbiased judgment, without instigation from any quarter. I know that what he has said will be understood as intimating, at least, that this conventional movement of ours was stimulated from South Carolina, and was the result of concert between certain South Carolina politicians and certain politicians in Mississippi, with a view of having that movement to originate in the State of Mississippi instead of South Carolina, in order to avoid any odium that might thereby arise. I am sure he did not intend to be so understood, and yet he will be if he does not correct his remarks.
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