WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1854
491
favor, or admiration from that State. I shall never ask for them, although I have always endeavored to deserve them. Yes, sir, from the deepest gorges in her mountains I have drank of her pure streams; on their summits my eyes first learned to look upon nature, and I have never ceased to feel proud that it was upon her soil that I walked in childhood. I remember it still. For her virtues I will laud her; in her misfortunes I will pity her. I will not raise a parricidal hand against my mother. Some of her children, though, have no doubt been spoiled, sir.· Well, Mr. President, that has taken up more time than I had anticipated; but I do not intend that it shall protract my speech beyond the session of to-day. It appears that there was some- thing prophetic in that writer. He says that I am opposed to the bill. Yes, sir, I am opposed to the provision in relation to the Indians; and if it were possible that I could feel more repugnant and determinedly against anything else, it would be the provision to repeal the Missouri compromise. Why, sir? Because I have stood upon it. Did I stand upon it alone? If I did in one section of the Union, I did not in the other. If I voted alone, the people of the South sustained me. Why? Because it was regarded as a solemn compact, and because they are proud, chivalrous, just, and generous. I adopt no new course, but have heretofore main- tained my present position; and the reasons which I gave on that occasion I will take care, sir, to reassert on this, and will show that it is no new ground to me; that it is one which I have maintained since Texas was annexed to the United States, and since she formed one star of our constellation. If I voted, Mr. President, on a former occasion, in 1848, for the Missouri Compromise, I voted for it in accordance with the sanction of Texas. "As a Texan, I could not consistently have voted otherwise. The compromise forms a part of the constitu- tion of that State, and her Senators in Congress must be bound by it so long as it continues a· portion of her organic law. Upon her citizens, her officers and agents, in whatever capacity they may be acting, it rests with paramount authority, which admits of no waver or dispensation." Among the conditions expressed in that enactment, to which the consent of the Republic of Texas was peremptorily exacted, as a prerequisite to her ad- mission into the Union, will be found the following. It provides that all new States formed north of 36° 30', within the limits of Texas, as she then rightfully claimed, slavery should be pro- hibited; that in all south of that, they could come into the Union
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