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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1851
principle, she permitted the Territory of Iowa to be formed and the State to be admitted into the Union, under the compromise, without objection; and that is now quoted by the Senator from New York to prove her surrender to the power she claims for Congress." Although no State in the Union and no assemblies had become adverse to this, yet it appears that it was taken for granted that it was unwelcome to the South, and therefore it was repudiated. But in going on further, to show the extent of that gentleman's dislike to it, and an expression doubtless that influenced ma- terially the action of the Southern Senators, he proceeds to say: "Now, let me say, Senators, if our Union and system of Gov- ernment are doomed to perish, and we to share the fate of so many great people who have gone before us, the historian, who, in some future day, may record the events tending to so calam- itous a result, will devote his first chapter to the ordinance of 1787, as lauded as it is and its authors have been, as the first in that series which led to it. His next chapter will be devoted to the Missouri compromise, and the next to the present agitation. Whether there will be another beyond, I know not. It will depend on what we may do." Here was a formal repudiation of the Missouri compromise line, upon the principle of which Texas had been brought into the Union, and by which one third of her territorial limits had been cut off to free soil. As Texas did come into the Union upon that line, I felt warranted and instructed by the Texan people to vote for the Missouri compromise when a bill for a territorial government came up, and I did it. In aiding the production of this compromise, or in its effectua- tion, I found it necessary, in justification of myself, and in the urgency I felt for its success, to make some remarks. I will read some extracts from the debate which took place. In a speech upon Mr. Clay's resolutions, and when it was pretty well ac- certained they would not pass, on the 8th of February, 1850, I made the following remarks : . . . [For these remarks see the speech of February 8, 1850, this volume, pages 119-144.] I wish to put myself right in relation to the views I then entertained upon the subject. Certainly I did not know of- ficially or reputedly that any interference had taken place in reference to this matter, but I believed, from the indications which afterwards surrounded me, that something of the kind
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