235
WRITINGS OF SAJ\'I HOUSTON, 1850
stultified? Do they not understand their rights? Are they not satisfied with the legislation of Congress? Have you seen com- plaints from that State? They have spoken in some cases, because certain resolutions were recommended to them from other States, and some of the agitators brought them forward before their deliberative assemblies, and they have been induced to a partial extent to concur in them; but it has only been partial. Whilst other States have not been agitated, the extreme South is. Look at the whole phase of this question of national preservation or destruction. Look at Maryland, look at Virginia, on the border, look at Kentucky, what has been their course of conduct? They are all the greatest sufferers by the deportation of slaves, and their escape into free territory. Do you see them agitated by the actual loss of their servants? No, sir; but the extreme southern States, from which, perhaps, one has scarcely ever escaped, they become the champions of the border States, and cry out for ven- geance and retaliation. Texas has her calamities; her servants have the Indians to flee to and escape. And that is not all; they have Mexico on their borders; but you hear them not talking of disunion, and threatening that certain enactments will lead to it, when they become laws. Sir, I regard it my duty, not only as a Senator, but as a good citizen, when la~s are passed that are not manifestly unjust, and when enacted by a majority, to submit to them. Why talk of resorting to a dissolution of the Union for the cure of even real evils? Here is the Supreme Court to resort to as one of our safe- guards; the President's veto is another safeguard; and we have all these alternatives rather than disunion. To that, as a remedy for evils, I am utterly opposed, unless the barriers of the Constitu- tion are broken down, and citizens or States have no protection of their rights, or shelter from oppression. I never will yield to impulses which I think unbecoming my station. I might feel wronged and aggrieved, but, whilst there is a constitutional source of redress, I will have recourse to that, and to no other, until it has utterly failed. If I am in a small minority I will do the majority the justice to believe that they are actuated by as pure principles as I am myself; and I think that I am but paying a due respect to their opinion and patriotism and judgment, in submitting with deference to their decision. But I will ne,·er rise up and oppose my opinion to that of the majority, beyond the legal and constitutional means which are devised and suggested by experience, by having the opportunity of declaring, in. open
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