546
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
The democratic party, which eight years ago carried its candi- date into the Presidency, by an overwhelming majority, is divided by factions. Coalitions formed with men of more ambition than patriotism, have broken down the old land marks. National men have given place to sectional agitators. Practical national ques- tions have given way to abstractions. Slavery agitation has been renewed in Congress; and the great work of the pacificators of 1850, has been undone. Sectionalism has been the canker-worm, which has feasted on the party, until its vitality has been ,vell nigh consumed. It is needless to define, at any length, the various heresies, which distract the country, each claiming for itself the name of Democracy. They each have their peculiar advocates and are suited to peculiar sections or isms. Whether known by the name of "Squatter Sovereignty," or a Congressional Slave Code for the Territories, they are alike opposed to the true doctrine of "non- intervention," and calculated to renew and keep alive the dangerous agitation of the slavery question, which both the political parties were pledged to resist, "under whatever color or shape it is presented." Then come all the shades of disunion at the South,-men who have been the advocates of re-opening the African Slave Trade-men who sustain the secession or disunion scheme proposed by the Legislature of South Carolina-who have counselled extreme measures for more than a quarter of a century and who in the garb of democracy, have used all their energies to promote the work of disunion, ,and prepare the way for the erec- tion of a Southern Confederacy, upon the ruins of our Constitu- tional Union. The Charleston Convention is to behold these elements-"black spirits and white, red spirits and grey,"-cong.lomerated.- Men, who have devoted their lives to the service of the Consti- tution and National principles, are to behold the humiliating spectacle; and their sentiments and councils are to be trampled under foot, by those who go committed to doctrines subversive of the Government and the rights of the people of the States. In olden times, there were no conventions, but those designed to form organic systems of government. As men became more aspiring and less scrupulous with regard to the impulses of patriotism, and a determination was evinced to sacrifice great principles in a general scramble for place and power, a desire was manifested, to adopt some means by which public opinion could be concentrated upon certain individuals, calculated to be
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