The Writings of Sam Houston, Volume V

WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1854

516

give it, and I never want to make trouble with my friends at home. I would rather you would keep it. If you are indebted in anything to the South, all I have to say is, that you might find some other occasion when it would be more agreeable to cancel the obligation. The South, as a community, only desire their rights under the Constitution and existing compromises. But, sir, the people are not going into abstractions to under- stand this subject. Nor will there be a lawyer at every point, every cross-road, every public meeting, every muster, or every court-house, to give elaborate dissertations upon the constitution- ality of the Missouri Compromise. I care nothing about its con- stitutionality or unconstitutionality. Not one straw do I care about it, on account of the circumstances out of which it grew, and the benefits flowing from it. Mr. Jefferson said he could not find constitutional authority for the acquisition of Louisiana. If that was the case, even if the Compromise, based upon an uncon- stitutional act, to reconcile the different sections of the country, was without authority of the Constitution, it became a legitimate subject of legislation. I say legitimate, because it was an acquisi- tion of territory which must be governed in some manner suited to the exigencies of the occasion. Hence the resort to the prin- ciple of compromise, and to legislation. Was the acquisition of Florida constitutional? I think not. Yet we retain it as one of our States. Was the acquisition of Texas constitutional? No, sir, it was not. It was a mere act of legislation on the part of this Government-a compromise--precisely such as the compromise which this bill proposes to repeal. But Texas is in, and you can not thrust us out; and that is the whole of it. But it is not con- stitutional. If it is not, and validity attaches only to compacts, in contradiction to compromises, then this is a compact predi- cated upon the compromise of Missouri. I do not know whether it is constitutional, technically. It is sufficient for me to know that it has stood for more than thirty years, and received the approbation of our wisest and ablest statesmen, from the day of its adoption down to the present, and was never questioned until after the commencement of the present session of Congress. It is strange that an unconstitutional law should have remained so long in force amid all the agitation, and excitement, and bitterness between the North and the South; and that this is the first proposition ever made to repeal it. Have we to yield to it without any necessity, and without any excuse for it, when we see that discord will run riot in our land?

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