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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1851
REMARKS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF SOUTH CAROLINA, MARCH 10, 185!1 I presume that it will not be supposed that the mispreresenta- tion could have been intentional when it was so liable to detection. Nor have I any desire to assail South Carolina or·any portion of her citizens, though I have been an object for South Carolina's resentment as far back, I believe, as my vote on the Oregon bill. I may even go further back-to the revolution of Texas, if you please-,,vhen the Governor of South Carolina denounced my countrymen and myself as outlaws, who ·were not entitled to the sympathies of the American community. 'fo that, however, I will not advert; I will confine myself to more recent events, and particularly to the denunciation by South Carolina of my vote on the Oregon bill. ·whether it was worthy of South Carolina's ·ctenunciation I will not stay to question, but it is a remarkable fact that identical votes were given by the representatives of South Carolina in relation to Iowa and Wisconsin, if not to other states; and yet, in a public speech in Charleston, a gentleman then a member of the Senate, but now no more, denounced me, and said that I ought to be held up to reprobation for the vote I had given. And, subsequent to that time, another individual in South Carolina assailed me in a style suited to his own taste. This speech was not admired, I admit, as an elegant literary specimen, but still it may have answered his purpose. To that I replied, and I thought matters were then ended. 2 I was in hopes they were. In consequence of some recent circumstances, and a publication which had been made by an honorable gentleman who is of South Carolina, I believe, or at least claims an affinity with South Carolina, and very properly too-I mean General Hamilton- a relative of mine, in a friendly correspondence, asked me for any suggestions I might feel at liberty to make in the present crisis, and I took occasion to advert to General Hamilton's letter. I did it, as I thought, in a courteous and becoming manner. Gen- eral Hamilton responded, and it was but fair that I should rejoin. I did so, and in the same spirit in which he had answered my letter to my relative, and this rendered the correspondence be- tween us direct. In my reply to him, I now believe, inaccuracies existed. They are corrected of course. They were not inten- tional, that must be manifest.
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