WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
430
This is done in accordance with the spirit of courtesy which should actuate the Executive of one State in his intercourse with that of another. At the same time, I deem it due to myself, as well as to your honorable body, to enter my unqualified protest against, and dissent from, the principles enunciated in the resolu- tions. The reasons assigned seem too insufficient to justify the meas- ures recommended, unsupported as they are by facts to establish their soundness. They appear to be the affirmation of the ordi- nance adopted by South Carolina in 1852, well known to be based upon the adoption by Congress of the compromise measures of 1850. These measures were endorsed by the people of Texas through their popular voice at the ballot-box; and as no recent incentive to action on the part of South Carolina appears other than that "the assaults upon the institution of slavery, and upon the rights and equality of the Southern States, have unceasingly ' continued," the·Executive is led to believe that these measures, so emphatically indorsed by the people of Texas, were one, if not the chief of the "assaults" enumerated. Were there no constitutional objections . to the course sug- gested by the resolutions I can not perceive any advantage that could result to the slaveholding States; or any one of them, in seceding from the Union. The same evils, the same assaults complained of now, would still exist, while no constitution would guarantee our rights, uniting the strength of a Federal Govern- ment able a~d willing to maintain them; but an insuperable objection arises in my mind. The course suggested has no con- stitutional sanction, and is at war with every principle affecting the happiness and prosperity of the people of each individual State, as well as their right in their national capacity. For years past, the doctrines of nullification, secession, and disunion have found advocates in Southern States as well as Northern. These ultra theories have, at different periods, raged with more or less violence, and there have not been wanting persons to fan the flame of discord, and to magnify imaginary evils into -startling realities. Confounding the language of in- dividuals with the acts of Government itself, they who desire disunion at the South are not satisfied with the Constitution fairly and honestly interpreted by the highest court in the country, and the law faithfully and impartially administered by the Federal Government (even to the exercise of all its powers) to protest the
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