WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
435
will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed-it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your National Union to your collective and in- dividual happiness; that you should cherisp a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it, accustoming yourself to think and speak of it as the palladium of your political safety and prosperity-watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety-discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate one portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts." It must be recollected that these sage admonitions were given to a people, and to the sacred cause of liberty, to which a long life of arduous toil and unselfish devotion had been given. T'em- porary excitement, fanaticism, ambition, and the passions which actuate demagogues, afforded no promptings to his fatherly teachings. They were those of a mind which felt that it was leaving a rich heritage of freedom to posterity, to whom was confided the worthy task of promoting and preserving human freedom and happiness. Next. among the patriot statesmen who devoted their lives to the achievement of our independence as a nation, is to be mentioned the venerated name of Thos. Jefferson. In relation to the subject of secession and disunion, we find the following ex- pression of his patriotic feelings. In June, 1798, at a time when conflicting elements seemed, in the estimation of many, to por- tend disunion, he wrote: "In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent disunions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or a shorter time. Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch and debate to the people the proceedings of the other. But if, on the temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no Federal Government can ever exist. If, to rid our- selves of the .present rule of Massachusetts and Con- necticut, we break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the New England States, alone, cut off, will our nature be changed? Are we not men still, to the south of that, and with all the passions of men'? Imme- diately we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Virginia party in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will
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