WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 184,6
488
would enter this Union, failed to fulfil those conditions after her reception, Mr. H. should feel that she was forever dishonored- that a blot was cast on the fair escutcheon of her fame; and was the power of this Government to excuse it if, on its part, it should be guilty of the like failure? He insisted that it could not. If she now refused to do what she promised when invi~ing Texas into the Union, her name as a nation could not escape the degra- dation to which it would be inevitably subjected. What those offers and stipulations were Mr. H. would now proceed to show from the correspondence of the Charge d'Affaires, who reiterated them again and again, who urged her to accept the conditions, and who pledged himself that if she did so her honor should be safe, and her national shield should remain without a stain. Texas had now entered the Union, and Mr. H. made his solemn appeal to the Senate to say whether these promises should be complied with, or whether a sister State should have her rights denied, and should be treated with contempt, because she acceded to propositions voluntarily made to her by this Government. \Vere her representatives here to be told that she had no right, or that it did not suit the convenience of the United States to comply with the solemn pledges which had been givei:i? Mr. H. proceeded to read a letter from Mr. Donelson, United States Charge to Texas, dated the 11th June, 1845: "The manifestations of her wish and determination to be re- stored to the bosom of the republican family have been unchanged by the denunciations of war, and have been expressed in opposi- tion to most artful attempts to create a doubt about the final action of Congress of the United States in passing the law yet necessary for her admission into the Union. So generous a confi- dence is worthy of a people who value the blessings of freedom, and cannot be disappointed. As sure as Texas accepts the pro- posals for her annexation to the Union, and adopts a republican form of government not incompatible in its provisions with the Constitution of the United States, so sure will the Congress of the United States, which has never yet violated its engagenients, declare Texas to be a State of the Union, with all the sovereignty, rights, and privileges, of any othe1· State." Mr. H. said there was no analogy between the condition of Texas and the other States of this Union which had been incor- porated into it since the independence of the old thirteen. There were States which had gradually grown up into such from having been Territories. They had passed the ordeal of a territorial pupilage; but Texas came into the Union full grown. She entered
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