WruTINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1851
265
protect her rights. Is any wise statesman of the South ready to admit that the federal constitution is not the very aegis of his sectional rights and privileges, as well as of those of the free States? I should regard such a man as little less than demented. Why, then, broach the idea of amending that glorious instrument, which is as near perfection now as human wisdom can make it? If it be abused or violated, amendment will not prevent that; for it is as easy to abuse or violate the amendment as the original instrument itself. It is impossible to close our eyes to the conspicuous figure South Carolina is endeavoring to cut in this emergency. She conquetted with Mississippi, and produced that unlucky nonde- script, the Nashville Convention. She courted Georgia, and offered the lead in the great enterprise to her, but that noble State contemptously rejected it. She is now coaxing the Old Dominion to join her mad scheme, and offering, as an inducement to place in her giant hands the oriflamme of disunion. Will Virginia accept or refuse the proffered ensign of treason? I believe she will spurn it with disdain. The Union and the federal constitution are too dear to Virginia to be cast idly away. They are her own children. They were dandled on her knee in their infancy, and, now that they have arrived at the maturity of Herculean manhood, they will stretch forth their powerful arms with her own to uphold her honor and to vindicate her rights. No. Virginia will be the last to desert them. The bones of Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison would not repose quietly in their honored graves, if she were to mar and blast their great labors of patriotic devotion to their country and to man- kind. How does it happen that South Carolina is the only beacon light in the Union? Who constituted her the pole star in our glorious constellation ?-Surely Virginia will not confess that her star is in the wane and that of the Palmetto State in the ascendant. Virginia is, as she has ever been, her own mistress, and can say to South Carolina, or to any other grumbling State, "Be still! We want no family jars; we will neither espouse your quarrels nor follow your mutinous example." I feel proud to refer to the course of my own gallant State. Texas had too much trouble to enter the Union to be willing to go out.-She knows full well the evils of war and of faction fomented by foreign interests and domestic traitors. She has had enough of separate independ- ence to be able to appreciate the benefits of union and fraternity. Let who may veer off after the false light of South Carolina, Texas
Powered by FlippingBook