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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1855
fact, I believe they were practically identical. All past party issues relating to this subject were done away with, though I believe General Scott who had received the nomination of the Whig party, favored the doctrines of Mr. Seward, a most obnox- ious and dangerous man to the South, for he has capacity and ability, and he has the will to use both. The election came on and resulted in the election of Mr. Pierce to the Presidency. He had accepted the nomination of the Democratic party, thereby endorsing the resolution against the agitation of the subject of slavery. When he delivered his inaugural address, he reaffirmed the declaration he had made in accepting the nomination, that he would by every means within his power, seek to repress the slavery agitation. He reiterated the same declaration in his an- nual message to Congress. We next heard that Kansas and Nebraska had to be organized, although there was not one single white settler within all its vast limits. It was occupied only by Indians who had been sent there, and by soldiers of the regular army of the United States. The country had been set apart by an act of Congress to the Indians, under the administration of General Jackson, for as long as leaves grew, water ran, or grass grew upon the soil, and if they ever abandoned it, it was to revert to the United States. These Indians had been transplanted from east of the Mississippi, and placed there by the acts of our gov- ernment, and they had been invested with the rights of the soil. And it was further guaranteed to them that they should never be molested, or be included within any territory, or state, in this Union, and yet Kansas and Nebraska included them. A bill for the organization of Nebraska had been introduced the year before without any extraordinary features in it, however. I opposed it at the last hour of the session, because i thought if the Indians were dispossessed of this territory which had been so solemnly guaranteed to them, they would be thrown within the borders of my own state. I succeeded in defeating the bill by postponing it to an hour when it could not be acted upon. It was rejected by the last Congress, but came forward again in very nearly the same form and was recommended to passage by Congress by Mr. Douglass, chairman of the Committee on Territories. I opposed it again, because it was doing wrong to the Indians, and was adverse to the interests of the state that I represented. Free soil was far removed from our borders, and if these territories were organized, I was satisfied that they would soon be settled and would become free states, bordering on our state for several
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