196
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
its defense. Let true men all over Texas and the South see to it, that we leave them not without a cause. I cannot believe that we can find at present more safety out of the Union than in it. Yet I believe it due to ·the people that they should know where they stand. Mr. Lincoln has been elected upon a sectional issue. If he expects to maintain that sectional issue, during his administration, it is well we should know it. If he intends to administer the government with equality and fair- ness, we should know that. Let us wait and see. I have left upon record my position, should the rights of Texas be sacrificed by the Federal Government. In reply to Mr. Seward, in the Senate, I used these words; and I pray my friends to con- sider them calmly, as they were uttered: "Whenever one section of this country presumes upon its strength for the oppression of the other, then will our Constitu- tion be a mockery, and it would matter not how soon it were severed into a thousand atoms and scattered to the four winds. If the principles are disregarded upon which the annexation of Texas was consummated, there will be for her neither honor nor interest in the Union; if the mighty in the face of written law, can place with impunity an iron yoke upon the neck of the weak, Texas will be at no loss how to act, or where to go before the blow aimed at her vitals is inflicted. In a spirit of good faith she entered the federal fold. By that spirit she will continue to be influenced until it is attempted to make her the victim of federal wrong. "And she will violate no federal rights, so will she submit to no violation of her rights by federal authority. The covenant she entered into with the Government must be observed, or it will be annulled. Louisiana, was a purchase, California, New Mexico, and Utah a conquest, but Texas was a voluntary annexation. If the condition of her admission is not complied with on the one part, it is not binding on the other. If I know Texas, she will not submit to the threatened degradation foreshadowed in the recent speech of the Senator from New York. She would prefer restora- tion to that independence which she once enjoyed, to the ignominy ensuing from sectional dictation. Sorrowing for the mistake which she had committed in sacrificing her independence at the altar of her patriotism, she would unfurl again the banner of the "Lone Star" to the breeze, and re-enter upon a national career, where, if no glory awaited her, she would, at least, be free from subjection by might, to wrong and shame."
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