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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1855
The negroes originated in a Southern climate, and they cannot live in a Northern climate with the enjoyment of the same degree of health, activity and vigor they enjoy at the South. They are healthy, active and cheerful. They are of all people on earth the most happy. . Have you ever heard of a slave committing suicide? If they were wretched and could not bear the chains, or the moderate slavery which they enjoy, they would have re- course to suicide to break their chains, and give their spirits freedom, but I never yet heard of a slave that committed suicide. [Applause.] Let us look for a moment at the condition of the North. The immense improvements you have made I am delighted with; I congratulate the people of the North with all my heart upon their many beautiful, convenient, profitable and elegant improve- ments. Your States are like gridirons, your fields and gardens, and your houses are elegant. In the interior of the State I was gratified with beholding more than oriental splendor; you have founded an elegant and enlightened state of society. But do you believe that if it had not been for the influx of foreign labor, you would have had these railroads? [Cheers and laughter.] Would the Americans, sons of the revolution, ever have been able to do the digging and all the other work that has been done here? [Cheers.] No. You never could have done it in the world. Well, it is well done, and I am glad to see that it is done. [Laugh- ter.] But let us reason a little further. Suppose the railroad projects had taken place before the time when you emancipated your slaves, and no foreigners had come. Emancipation did not take place in the North until the adoption of the Federal Con- stitution. I think in about the year '90. Do you think that if the railroads had been started then, emancipation would have been begun? You would have had negroes at work building railroads to this day, just as sure as the world. [Applause and laughter.] It is necessity that produces slavery; it is convenience, it is profit, that creates slavery; though often the owners are not as much benefited by it as it is thought. It is true that labor must be performed, and when foreign labor had become reduced to a standard, at which it was cheaper than that of slaves, with the capital invested in them, you employed foreigners, and turned off your slaves. Had there been such an influx of foreign emigra- tion at the South, do you believe they would have continued to
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