196
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1859
you must be solely dependent upon railroad transportation, and you cannot have it by water, because the Mississippi is ice-bound ~s well as the Missouri, and you are arrested there. All the cheapness, all the convenience, and everything that would result from the other terminus is there converted into a cost and an impediment to transportation. I think that to restrict the southern limit to the thirty-seventh, or even to the thirty-fourth parallel, is ruling out one of the most important routes, the advantages of which to the South will be incalculably greater than any other. By leaving a margin for including that route, do we cut off the North from any portion of the advantages which it has a right to claim? Not at all. The Ohio and the Mississippi are open to Cairo, and at Cairo, at Memphis, and at Vicksburg, the line of which I have spoken will connect with the whole eastern portion of the country. The entire line north will be 1·eached from Cairo; from Memphis this line will communicate with Charleston, with Richmond, and with all the southern portion of the Union. Either from Vicksburg, or from Memphis, you can convey to New Orleans, by ship or steam- boat transportation, all the materials that will arrive from the Pacific coast. If you have anything to transport there, you have all the advantages of embarking them at a point more accessible than the mouth of the Ohio for the people of the North. They have no streams to ascend; but the people of the South have the broad and secure Mississippi, with no impediments, no sawyers, no obstructions, to prevent their reaching the terminus with per- fect convenience and security. You cannot have access to the North from any other point with the same facilities that you can from this terminus on the Mississippi. Why rule out this route? Is it not entitled to consideration? Why not give entire latitude to those who are to construct the road, to make their own selection? If it is not eligible to make the terminus I have suggested, very well; let them so decide; but I implore you not to disfrancise those who have a right to your consideration as a part of the Union. If this is to be a great national work, give it a national character, and treat it as a national measure for the defense of the Pacific coast. I have always been its advocate. I have seen no constitutional impedi- ment to it. There is none; or else it is unconstitutional to give national defense. The Federal Government is bound to defend the several States, and to give security to them. If they owe it
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