WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1850
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produce dissension at home, and excite prejudice against her rights abroad. That convention was at best but the representation of a portion of the people, in which the bone and sinew either of Texas or any other southern State, in my opinion, had no participation. Go to the yeomanry, or, as they are called, the hard-handed men of the country, the man of substance, and he will tell you, with his family gathered around him-this is my home, this is my wife, and here are my children; and thus sur- rounded I am in this humble mansion as proud as the monarch in his palace-here the Constitution protects me, and I am going to place all these endearments upon the hazard of disunion? Never! never will they do it, sir! I tell you that the people of the South are right. Give to them but the benefit of their constitutional guarantees, and all the factions of the day, all the abstractions that can be conjured up by disaffection, by broken- down politicians, by disappointed spirits, by men who have here- tofore advocated nullification, by loafers who live upon excitement, and by reckless demagogues; in spite of them all, I say the South will hug the Union to her heart as the last blessing of Heaven. [Mr. Davis, of Mississippi made a statement.] I have not said that the Senator from Mississippi did not advocate the rights of Texas; on the contrary, I feel grateful to him and to every other gentleman who has sustained her title. Nor has Texas taken any course condemna- tory of the position assumed by those gentlemen. She supported the boundary bill, with the view of harmonizing matters and removing what appeared to be an obstacle in the way of restoring peace and quiet to the country. As she came into the Union on the principle of concession, she was willing still further to extend her action on that principle, in the hope that great good might result from it. Hence it was that the Senators from Texas supported that bill, and I entertain the hope that the Legislature of the State will ratify our·action, and that the very unpleasant circumstances standing in the way of harmony and peace will soon be removed. We yielded no right whatever which Texas possessed, but we conceded, as Texas has done since her inception, much to the United States for the preservation of the quiet of the Union. The Senator from Mississippi contends that I am wrong in relation to the fact that a majority of the counties were not represented in the convention at Jackson. It is true, although I obtained my information from respectable sources, that it may
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