WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1858
41
in the South. I am opposed to both extremes. I favor neither. There is a middle ground, and there we shall find rectitude and propriety and all that is desirable. It.was not the gentleman, personally, that I wished to rebuke. I referred to his sentiments. And, now, since he has made allusion to my State, I will say a word on that point. I grant him, very truthfully, that I have received an earnest and gratifying assurance from my con- stituents that they intend to relieve me of further service here. I say gratifying, for in the recent election, they beat me; and it is gratifying because I had every disposition to retire on the fourth of March next from public life. How it was brought about, I cannot exactly tell. I know that I had a chevalier and ex-President mounted with boots, spurs, and whip, and a hind rider from Illinois, both after me ever since I voted against the Kansas- Nebraska bill; and that was enough to break down any old gray horse. [Laughter]) Besides all the Federal influence was marshalled, drilled, and prepared for the combat; and so I was defeated. But I am very much obliged to my State, because they have not disowned me in beating me-they have only preferred another. I have this further assurance, that I made the State of Texas, but I did not make the people; and if they do wrong, the State still remains in all its beauty, with all its splendid and inviting prospects, with nothing on earth to surpass it in its climate, soil, and productions-all varied and delightful. It remains the same beautiful Texas. I made it a State, but I did not make its people. They came there, and they are there; but the State remains, and I am a proud citizen of it. The gentleman says that he loves Alabama, because he was born there. Sir, I, too, love Alabama; I have endearments of t_he most delicate character connected with Alabama. More, sir, while it was still an unbroken wilderness-forty years ago--when the savage and the wild beast roamed over it, and every man who went there had to go with his life in one hand and his weapons of war in the other; it was there, in Alabama, that I kindled camp-fires, sat by them, and kept vigils. I assisted in redeeming that land from a wilderness and a desert, and I watered it with the richest blood of youth that flowed in these veins. Ought I not to love the South? Yes, sir, I cherish every manly sentiment for the South; and I am determined that while I live in it, none of the fraternal bonds which bind it to this Union shall be broken.
1cong1·essional Globe, Appendix, 1857-1858, pp. 160-151.
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