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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1854
Why will this prove injurious to the South? It is not worth while to review before intelligent gentlemen the circumstances under which the Missouri compromise was formed. The neces- sities of the country were great, its emergencies alarming, a:nd it was adopted by the voice of the representatives of the American people, as a compact between the North and the South. Since that time, an inequality greater than then existed between the North and the South, numerically and politically, has grown up, and continues to grow. The preponderance in favor of northern influence and northern votes is every day in progress of increase, and must continue so in after times. It is not to cease. The vast northwestern portion of our continent, unadapted to slave labor, will not be filled up by southern men with slaves, and northern people will increase that preponderance until the North is con- nected with California, through the valleys and gorges of the Rocky Mountains. As an evidence that we have nothing to hope for from the increase of the States, unless such may be formed out of Texas or New Mexico, the honorable chairman of the Committee on Territories concedes, as I understand him, the fact that Nebraska and Kansas will never be inhabited by a slave population. He thinks the chances decidedly against their ever being filled with slave-holders. I think so too. I think the South have to over- come a law of nature more potent than geographical obstacles, before ever that country ·will be filled by a slave population. Then is it for the benefit of the South that this restriction should be repealed? No. The North do not demand it. Will the South be benefited by it? There is no more doubt in my mind that Indiana and Illinois are non-slaveholding States, than that Nebraska and Kansas will always be such. Well, sir, what is it giving to the South? They have not demanded it. Is it giving them a toy or a bauble? Are you to amuse them as you amuse children, by giving them a rattle to tickle the ears of the little fellow? No, sir; this is a grave sub- ject. They have not asked for bread, that you can offer them a stone; or a fish, that you can give them a serpent. The day, I fear, must come in the progress of our country- though God forbid that it ever should-that g•reat trials and emergencies will grow up between the North and the South. The South is in a minority. She cannot be otherwise. The laws of nature and of progress have made her·so. If the South accede to the violation of a compact as sacred· as this, they set an example
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