WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
431
rights of property and guarantee the same, are ready to seek relief from abolitionism in disunion. It is not to be supposed that the people of the South regard the institution of slavery as possessing so little moral strength as to be injured by the "assaults" made upon it by a fanatical element of Northern population, who so long as they stay at home do us no harm, and but excite a pity for their ignorance and contempt for their ravings. So long as a government exists, ready and willing to maintain the Constitution, and to gua~d every citizen in the enjoyment of his individual rights, the States, and the citizens of the State, may rest secure. Ungenerous and unchari- table as are the assaults made by a class of the North upon the peculiar institutions of the South, they would exist from like passions and like feelings under any government; and it is to the Constitution alone, and the Union possessing strength under it, that we are indebted for the preservation of those separate rights which we see fit to exercise. No matter to what extent these passions may go, the Federal arm is to be stretched forth as a barrier against all attempts to impair them. It is to be presumed that the raid upon Harper's Ferry, by Brown and his miserable associates, has been one of the causes which have induced these resolutions by the Legislature of South Carolina. In my opinion, the circumstances attending that act have furnished abundant proofs of the utility of our present system of government; in fact, that the Federal powers have given an evidence of their regard for the constitutional rights of the States, and stood ready to defend them.· It has, besides, called forth the utterance of the mighty masses of the people, too long held in check by sectional appeals from selfish dema- gogues, and the South has the assurance of their fraternal feel- ings. The fanatical outrage was rebuked and the offenders pun- ished. Is it for this that the Southern States are called upon to dissolve the fraternal ties of the Union, and to abandon all the benefits they enjoy under its aegis, and to enter upon expedients in violation of the Constitution and of all the safeguards of liberty under which we have existed as a nation nearly a century? In the history of nations, no people ever enjoyed so much national character and glory, or individual happiness, as do today the people of the United States. All this is owing to our free Con- stitution. It is alone by the union of all the States, acting har- moniously together· in their spheres under the Constitution, that our present enviable position has been achieved. Without a Union
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