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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
embodied in what is known as the Dallas-Clarendon treaty. It receives the signature of the American Minister at London, is approved by an American Secretary of State, and an American President sends it for ratification to the American E;enate. One is almost tempted to believe that the United States itself is not unwilling to become a party to a treaty which is an insult, as well as injury, to the whole Southern people. And other Spanish-American States have shown their desire to join in this league. Not only was the proposition for a general combina- tion of these Republics discussed in the Chilian Congress, but a Chilian Commissioner was sent to San Jose for the purpose of negotiating a treaty with Costa Rica. A Chilian brig of war, too, having commis- sioned and warrant officers furnished by England and France, came to the coast of Central America with the view of aiding in the combina- tion against the Americans of Nicaragua. Nor is Mexico indifferent in the matter. Her border territories fur- nish a place of refuge for runaways of the Southern and Southwestern States; and the New-Mexican Constitution just adopted has, I am told, a clause by which the Central Government is precluded from making a treaty with the United States for the extradition of fugitive slaves. In fact, you have but to read the journals of the Spanish-American Republics from Mexico to Chili to be satisfied of the enmity - active as well as passive - to the people and institutions of the Southern States. Independent, then, of the importance to the whole United States, -and to civilization generally, of Americanism in °Nicaragua, I cannot but regard our success as of more immediate and vital consequence to the people of the Southern States. It involves the question whether you will permit yourselves to be hemmed in on the south, as you are ,already on the north and on the west - whether you will remain quiet ·and idle while impassable barriers are being built on the only side left open for your superabundant energy and enterprise. If the South is desirous of imitating the gloomy grandeur of the Eschylian Prome- theus, she has but to lie supine a little while longer, and force and power will bind her to the rock, and the vulture will descend to tear the liver from her body. In her agony and grief she may console her- self with the idea that she suffers a willing sacrifice. It is not often that men are permitted to expend their energies in behalf of a cause which embraces the welfare of other nations and of civilization gcnerall.v as well as the interests of their native country. But the Americans who engage with their means and their energies in the reclamation of Nicaragua can, I verily believe, console themselves with the idea that they are benefiting the people of that land as well as of their own. More than this; they may have the gratifying assur- ance that they are redeeming from barbarism one of the fairest coun- tries of the earth and conferring on commerce a great highway for the trade of the world. It is only such considerations and reflections as these which can console us for much of the censure passed on us by the people of a portion of the United States and of Europe. But satisfied of the justice and grandeur of the cause in which we are engaged, we can
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