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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1854
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They have a respect and reverence for it, from its antiquity and the associations connected with it, and repeated references to it that seem to suggest that it marked the boundaries of free and slave territory. They have no respect for it as a compact-I do not care what you call it-but as a line, defining certain rights and privileges to the different sections of the Union. The abstrac- tions which you indulge in here can never satisfy the people that there is not something in it. Abrogate it or disannul [disallow] it, and you exasperate the public mind. It is not necessary that reason should accompany excitement. Feeling is enough to agitate without much reason, and that will be the great prompter on this occasion. My word for it, we. shall realize scenes of agitation which are rumbling in the distance now. · I have heard it said, and may as well remark it now, that the Abolitionists and Free-Soilers, to a certain extent, will affiliate with the weaker political party at the North, the Whigs, and will make a fair contest with the Democrats. If they throw this ques- tion in the scale, and the Democrats do not, they will preponderate. Then how are the Democrats to sustain themselves under this pressure? Suppose the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, or the repeal of the Compromise of 1850 is proposed, and the Democrats oppose it, they will meet with the objection that it is not more sacred than the Missouri Compromise, and the repeal will be urged before the· people; and we shall see our House of Represen- tatives with a preponderating power of Abolitionism, the prin- ciples of which will triumph. Every Representative who votes . for this measure will be prostrated; he can not come back, or, if he comes back, he will be pledged to the repeal of a measure fraught with so many blessings of peace to the country. With all the fancied benefits of non-intervention, they can not over- balance the disastrous consequences that must ensue to our institutions. This is an eminently perilous measure, and do you expect me to remain here silent, or to shrink from the discharge of my duty in admonishing the South of what I conceive the results will be? I will do it in spite of all the intimidations, or threats, or dis- countenances that may be thrown upon me. Sir, the charge that I am going with the Abolitionists or Free-Soilers affects not me. The discharge of conscious duty prompts me often to confront the united array of the very section of the country in which I reside, in which my associations are, in which my personal inter- ests have always been, and in which my affections rest. \\ hen every look to the setting sun carries me to the bosom of a family
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