•
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1854
499
essential to the preservation of this Union, and to the very exist- ence of the South. It has heretofore operated as a wall of fire to us. It is a guarantee for our institutions. Repeal it, and there will then be no line of demarkation. Repeal it, and you are putting the knife to the throat of the South, and it will be drawn. No event of the future is more visible to my perception than that, if the Missouri compromise is repealed, at some future day the South will be overwhelmed. I do not wish to be sectional. I do not wish to be regarded as for the South alone. I need not say that I am for the whole country. If I am, it is sufficient without rehearsing it here. But, sir, my all is in the South. My identity is there. My life has been spent there. Every tendril that clusters around my heart, every ,chord that binds me to life or hope, is there; and I feel that it is my duty to stand up in behalf of her !rigthts, and, if possible, to secure every guarantee for her safety and her security. I claim the Missouri compromise, as it now stands, in behalf of the South. I ask Senators to let its benefits inure to us. I do not want it taken away. The South has not demanded it. In all the canvass of last year, did any southern man demand the repeal of the Missouri compromise? Has any newspaper said so? Has any voice proclaimed it? No! And I appeal to the Senators, who sympathize with us in our necessities and in our apprehensions, to remember that we have not asked for the repeal. Suppose a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, during the last canvass, at the last moment, when there was barely time enough left to send the news over the wires to the various parts of the Union, had proclaimed that he was in favor of the repeal of the Missouri compromise, how many States would he have received? How many votes would have endorsed him? I care not who the candidate might have been; I care not if it had been General Jackson or General Washington, they could not have secured the indorsement of the American people. I am now called upon to vote for the repeal of the Missouri compromise, which I esteem everything to the South-under which it has prospered, and in which we have always acquiesced since its adoption-which the South united in applying to Texas when 'it was admitted into the Union; and even Texas has pros- pered under the infliction. Texas was a party to the compact, and she has not repealed her part of it; she has not assented to the 1·epeal, and I, as her representative, never will. I may be voted down, but I will submit to the infliction of a calamitous dispen- sation. I will yield, if not cheerfully, I at least,, ill "acquiesce."
Powered by FlippingBook