349
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1859
fought to give the people the privilege of doing as they please in matters of this kind, and they did perfectly right to exercise it at my expense if they saw fit. I was perfectly willing to go into private life, if the people were done with me, for devotion to the public service had kept me poor. It showed that they were an independent and self-reliant people, and that it was a mis- taken idea that Texas could not get along without Houston. Was I to quarrel with you for acting out the principles for which I had so long contended-that of voting for just whom you please? You had a better right to vote against me than anybody else. You larupped me unmercifully, but yet I felt that the pledges made to you during the canvass were none the less faithfully to be iulfilled. Texas had endorsed Mr. Buchanan by the largest ma- jority in proportion to her vote, of any State in the Union. I told you I would support his administration. I did so. He had not received my vote, but it was not because I did not have con- fidence in his ability or patriotism. I voted against his platform- believing it to contain Squatter Sovereignty, a heresy against which I have ever contended, and which I never will endorse. I was gratified with his nomination, relying upon his antecedents, and knew that if he was elected he would not betray the people, but the platform contained ideas regarding slave property in the territories so ambiguous that the two sections of the Union each put their own construction upon it, the one claiming that it approved Squatter Sovereignty, and the other that it con- demned it,-and it was not until Mr. Buchanan in his Inaugural declared in favor of the correct principle, that the South knew upon which idea the government would be admi:nistered. When that declaration was made, interpreting the platform according ·to the Constitutional idea, there was no bar to my giving him a decided support. So long as I held my seat in the Senate I was bound by your wishes. Had the tone of the Administration been such that I could not have obeyed your instructions, as expressed by your vote for Mr. Buchanan, without compromising my prin- ciples, I should have resigned. Mr. Buchanan's election gratified me. The result showed that he united the strength that defeated the Black Republicans, and that was the great end which I wished attained. I am now denounced for supporting an administration which the democratic party placed in power, which the people of Texas helped to create by a majority of eighteen thousand. Admit that as a whole I sustained the Administration. Is is not an evidence of my democracy,-of my regard for the will of the people? What
Powered by FlippingBook