WIUTINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1860
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followed in its path, and yet the aegis of the Union has been broad enough to compass all. Is not this worth perpetuating? Will you exchange this for all the hazards, the anarchy and carnage of civil war? Do you believe it will be dissevered and no shock felt to society? You are asked to plunge into a revolu- tion; but are you told how to get out of it? Not so; but it is to be a leap in the dark-a leap into an abyss, whose horrors would even fright the mad spirits of disunion who tempt you on. Our forefathers saw the danger to which freedom would be subjected, from the helpless condition of disunited States; and "to form a more perfect Union,'' they established this Gover- ment. They saw the effect of foreign influence on rival States, and the effect of dissensions at home, and to strengthen all and perpetuate all, to bind all together, yet leave all free, they gave us the Constitution and the Union. Where are the evidences that their patriotic labor was in vain? Have we not emerged from an infant's to a giant's strength? Have not empires been added to our domain, and States been created? All the blessings which they promised their posterity, have been vouchsafed; and millions now enjoy them, who without this Union would today be op- pressed and down-trodden in far-off foreign lands! What is there that is free that we have not? Are our rights invaded and no Government ready to protect them? No! Are our institutions wrested from us and others foreign to our taste forced upon us? No! Is the right of free speech, a free press, or free suffrage taken from us? No! Has our property been taken from us and the Government failed to. interpose when called upon? No, none of these! The rights of the States and the rights of individuals are still maintained. We have yet the Constitution, we have yet a judiciary, which has never been appealed to in vain-we have yet just laws and officers to ad- minister them; and an army and navy, ready to maintain any and every constitutional right of the citizen. Whence then this clamor about disunion? Whence this cry of protection to prop- erty or disunion, when even the very loudest in the cry, declared under their Senatorial oaths, but a few months since, that no protection was necessary? Are we to sell reality for a phantom? There is no longer a holy ground upon which the footsteps of the demagogue may not fall. One by one the sacred things placed by patriotic hands upon the altar of our liberties, have been torn down. The Declaration of our Independence is jeered at. The farewell counsels of Washington are derided. The charm of
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