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jLj-'i , 1 LLL'Jt’g"
•PcJte, I wants to ax you acolutnnibus.’
‘Succeed, nigger.’ 4 Well, why is a quilt
like a railroad? does you give it up?—
Cause there is sleepers under it. Y all!
yah! what an ignorant colored individual
you is.’
*1 had rather not take a ham with you,'
said the loafer to the mad bull—but the
bull insisted upon treating him to ttvo, and
the loafer got quite high.
TIKE REID U f
S. M. STRONG, Editor.
VOLUME 1.
POLITICAL.
SPEECH OF lION. A. 11. CHAPPELL,
fF GEORGIA,
On the Annexation of Texas to the V. States.
Delivered in the H. of Reps., January 26, 1845.
Mr. Chappell began by saying that,
notwithstanding all that had lallen from
the gentleman from Ohio, (Mr. Brinker
lioff,) and other gentlemen entertaining
kindred sentiments with him, there were,
nevertheless, those who must be still per
mitted to regard the proposition for annex
ing Texas to the United States as pre-emi
eminently a great national question, and
nothing (Mr. C. thought) could be more
utterly vain than the labored attempt'
which had been made on tbi3 floor to give j
it a different complexion in the eyes of the j
American people. That people had pass-1
ed solemnly and deliberately on the ques- j
lion. It was no longer an open and unde
termined question with them. After a
most full, anxious, and unsparing itivesti-i
gation of it, in all its aspects and bearings, j
the popular voice had been pronounced—;
the popular seal had been set in regard to !
it, in a manner not to be forgotten or j
erased, and certainly in a manner not to
be misunderstood or lightly treated by the i
servants and representatives of the peo
ple. Futile, indeed, must be the effort to j
reverse, or qualify, or disparage thatjudg- j
ment—and worse than futile—wrongful iu I
the highest degree to the people ami the
country —to attempt to thwart or delay its i
execution. Yet that attempt is strenuous
ly made, and made, too, in quarters from !
which, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me to
come with a very bad grace—in quarters'
where we had a right to expect at least a |
magnanimous, patriotic acquiescence iu!
the unequivocally expressed will of the!
country —not captious objections, and tne ;
excitement of sectional jealousies and pre-1
judices, calculated only' to embarrass and
defeat tbe fulfilment of that will.
Sir. the gentleman from Ohio has vehe
mently denounced this whole measure of
Texiati Annexation as nothing but a sel
fish, sectional project from beginning to
end. Whatever other merit the charge
may lack, it certainly possesses that of
boldness in no small degree. It brings the
gentleman pointedly in conflict with the
sense of the country, and particularly with
the acknowledged and deeply settled con
victions of that great and triumphant po
litical party to which the gentleman be
longs; a party which, under the irresisti
ble pressure of this very matter as a nation
al question, found itself compelled, ou the
eve of battle and in the face of a powerful
and well organized enemy, to make chan
ges and perform evolutions wonderful and
unprecedented in the annals of political
warfare, and which, by' being made and
performed, won for that party a great and
brilliant victory, equally wonderful and
unprecedented. Surely, sir, gentlemen
exhibit not a little temerity in stigmatizing
as u narrow sectional project, a measure
which the people of both the great politi
cal parties of the country concurred every
where in putting in issue as a cardinal and
paramount questions in the Presidential
election; a measure for which the people
of one of those great parties (that to which
the gentleman belongs) were found every
where co-operating and combatting with
out distinction of local habitation or sec
tionaj abode, whilst the people of the oth
er great party were found just as univer
sally and with just as little sectional dis
tinction, co-operating and combatting a
gainst it. These facts, Mr. Chairman, are
flagrant, fresh, and undeniable; and if they
do not amount to a demonstration that, ac
cording to the sense of the country and of
both its great political parties, the Texian
question is entitled to be ranked as one of
national and not merely sectional charac
ter and import, 1 confess mysell ata loss to
conceive what would amount to such a de
monstration.
Anil what sort of logic, sir, has the gen- j
tleman called to his aid against this great;
and pervading sentiment of the public !
mind. By what course of argument, by
what sweep of induction has he essayed,
in the lace of this general and deliberate
sense of the country, to set a bold allega
tion of his own to tbe country —to set up
an allegation that the whole project of ac
quiring Texas has nothing but sectional,
selfish policy and considerations for its
ground work and end. Sir, did the gen
tleman arrive at a conclusion so derogato
ry, by first taking a large, calm, and com
prehensive survey of the subject in all its
ramifications? Did he first take care to
open his mind to it and embrace it as a
great whole, made up, though it be, of nu
merous and diversified (yet not inharmo
nious) parts? Did he first fix his gaze up
on it, sir, in the benign grandeur of the
general outline with which it towers up in
our national horizon? No, sir. He did
no such thing. Such a mode of contem
plating it would have been too fatally in
compatible with the cherished object of
dwarfing it down to the meanness of a
miserable sectional lead among ourselves.
Sir, had the gentleman seen til to look at
this great question in that large, generous,
and obvious aspect in which it so natural
ly arrests and conciliates the regaru of an
expanded American patriotism —in that
aspect, sir, in which it has relation to aug
menting vastly our country’s dominion,
riches, and power—-an augmentation to
which we are invited, in this instance, by
all the politics as well as all the generous
1 considerations that ought to weigh with us
PRO PATRIA ET LEGISTS.
MAUON, GEORGIA, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 1815.
as a nation —an augmentation, too, pro
posed to be brought about by means fully
consonant with right and justice, and the
most scruphlou3 philanthropy—to be
brought about by simply throwing open
! our arms arid stretching out our jurisdic
tion for the reception ot a consenting and
kindred people like unto us, and sympa
thising with us to all things, and eager to
bring along with them intoour Union to the
magnificent dowery of an extensive and
fertile territory, lying upon our borders,
and incalculably' important to us in refer
ence to our existing possessions and inte
rests—had the gentleman, I say, sir, seen
fit to have indulged in this, so simple and
natural, yet so truly national and Ameri
can view of the su! ject, assuredly he could
never have thought arid felt in regard to it
in the manner in which he has expressed
himself tothe Committee. Such a view,
had he seen fit to have given it entertain
ment, would have effectually rebuked and
overruled such a strain as that in which the
gentleman has chosen to speak, Yes, sir
—I venture the opinion that even he would
have found it a view powerful enough to
have irowned down and driven out from
his mind whatever mere sectional objec
tion might have been allowed a lodgement
there, especially one of such a character
as that on which alone he has expatiated,
and which alone he has put forward to hor
rify himself and the rion-slaveholding por
tions of the Union withal.
But the gentleman’s omission stop not
with his neglect to take such an enlarged
and general view of the subject. He has
equally shunned to investigate it in the de
tails ot its effects. Permit me, sir, to say
to him that something in the nature of a
detailed examination of the influences of
the measure, item by item, on the different
sections of the Union, and their respective
interests, was peculiarly incumbent on
him, trotn the very character of the de
nunciations in which he has indulged.—
Branding the measure as utterly reprehen
sible, on account of its alleged sectional
nature, he was bound to have shown us
wherein consisted its tendency to build up
and benefit some sections or interests of
the country at the expense of other sec
tions and interests. He was bound par
ticularly to have pointed out the various
interests which it would subject to proba
ble detriment, anil to have gone into some
what of a tangible statement and specifi
cation of the wrongs and injuries it would
bring on those interests. But he has not
done or attempted any such thing, although
there is no other way in which, according
to any legitimate principles of reasoning,
he could have gone about the construction
of an argument in support of his sectional
denunciations. And doubtless he acted
wisely iri abstaining from any attempt of
this kind. It was well for his own con
tentment in the conclusions in which his
mind reposes, that he relied on mere gene
ral allegation and strong assertion, without
venturing to bring forward, in their sup
port, any bill of particulars of the section
al effects of the measure. His favorite
idea, that is a project for Southern aggran
dizement, merely, regardless of the iute
lests of the North and West, could not have
stood such, a test. It would have fallen
unhonored by the way-side, pierced by a
hundred mortal wounds, had he subjected
it to run the gauntlet of a detailed examin
ation and review of the influences that
would he exerted by the measure on the
several sections of the Union and their va
rious interests.
Sir, it is utterly untenable, and no gen
tleman has pretended to maintain that
there is any set of interests in this country
that would sicken and droop by letting iu
the sunshine and showers of Texas upon
them. To what quarter will gentlemen
turn to look for such a phenomenon? The
North furnishes it not. Her agriculture,
her commerce, her manufactures, her ship
ping and mining interests, her arts and
trades of all kinds, hold up their industri
ous hand and exult as the field for the de
velopment and reward ol American labor,
capital,and enterprise widens around them;
and it is on Texas, “that delightful pro
vince of the sun,” that they now fix their
longing gaze. That land, when once in
corporated into our Union, they know full
well must soon become the finest and most
enriching market in the world for all their
fabrics and productions. It possesses ev
ery natural requisite for this purpuse, vast
extent, exhausiless fer.ility, easy 10 nmer
cial access, wide dissimilarity of climate,
soil, and productions, from those of our
Northern Slates. What is further needed,
is nothing else than that rapid advance of
culture and population, and that perpetual
unshackled intercourse of Itee trade which
annexation would certainly produce, and
alone can insure. The North, sir, with all
her prejudices and jealousies in relation to
the South, cannot be blind to these facts,
and hence neither from the North,or North
ern gentlemen on this floor, have we heard
anv attempt at a specification of North
ern interests that would be made to suf
fer by the admission of Texas into the
Union.
All that I have now said, sir, of the ef
fects of the measure in favor of the North
may be still more strongly said of its bear
ing on the interests of the West—that no
ble region of which its inhabitants and re
presentatives are so justly proud. The
wisdom and providence of nature in the
architecture of our globe is displayed no
where on its surface in a more striking
manner, or on a grander scale, than in the
construction of the great intermontane val
lev of the Mississippi, and the dependent
shores and islands of tho Gulf of Mexic
Dependent, sir. I call them, in that sense
in which nature designs and desires de
pendence between different portions of
her works—a dependence at which man
should rejoice as a powerful means to his
own ease, happiness, and refinement, and
to the culture and improvement of that
earth which is his heritage. In this sense,
sir, nature designed and ordained an inti
mate dependence and connection of the
most enduring kind, between the great
grain-growing, bread-producing, regions
of the Upper Mississippi and the Southern
country spreading around the Gulf and the
rich islands scattered over its bosom.—
They constitute natural, and, iu process of
time, will become almost indispensable
markets for each other; markets admira
bly adapted to each other by their corres
ponding vastness and the dissimilarity of
their respective productions, as well as by
their neighborhood and the unequalled ex
tent and facilities of water inter-communi
cation which they enjoy by means of the
Gulf and the numerous bays indenting it,
and the thousand rivers pouring into it on
all sides, from an extensive interior. Os
this great gulf-drained interior, a huge pro
portion consists of the upper or bread-pro
ducing part of the valley of the Mississip
pi; a region so large and fertile as to be ca
pable, whenever it shall be fully opened I
and cultivated, of feeding, I bad almost
'said, half the world with its agricultural
surpluses.
Well, sir, let me ask the attention of die
committee, and of western gentlemen par
ticularly, tothe question, what is to become
of (hose surpluses. Already they over
stock the markets within their reach, and
stagnate, to no small extent, on the fat soil
of their growth. What is to become of
them, sir, when, within a few brief years,
Iniiiana, Illinois, Missouri, lowa, Wiscon
sin. and the newly conceived, yet unborn,
Nebraska, shall be covered with a popula
tion as dense as that of Ohio, and equally
bent on laying tho earth under contribution
to their hard-handed industry? What, I
ask, will the West then do with her im
mense agricultural surpluses? Why, sir,
they must either rot on her hands, poison
ing her very atmosphere, paralyzing her
energies, and formidably checking her
prosperity and civilization, or they must
find a safe and certain market, expanding
apace with their own increase , in those sunny
dimes towards which the Mississippi flows. —
This, sir, is the vital condition on which
western prosperity depends. Every year
it will become a more anil more urgent
and pressing condition, and if it shall fail
to be realized, not all the vast extent and
exhaustless fertility of western iands—not
all ihe earth-subduing industry anil enter
prise of the western people—not alt the
artificial facilities of commercial transpor
tation which they may add to those so
abundantly bestowed by nature, can ward
off' the doom of tbe West; —that heavy
doom which infallibly overtakes and de
presses every people who become, from
whatever cause, destitute of markets ade
quate to the absorption ol their surpluses,
and to the rewarding of the exertion of their
augmenting capabilities of production.—
When tiiat doom comes, sir, then will it
be that the West shall see the richest bles
sings showered by Heaven turning into
curses upon her, and civilization itself will
corrode, and her brightest virtues suffer
decay, under the influence of causes which
will at once make it so easy to draw from
the soil a rude subsistence, and so dis
heartening to strive for any thing beyond.
How, sir, is this state of things to be pre
vented, and western prosperity to be pro
tected against the baleful consequences of
her own gigantic growth and development.
I repeat, sir, that there is but one means,
and that is to bring about a corresponding
ly rapid progress of cultivation and popu
lation in the islands of the gulf and its cir
cumjacent countries, aud to have, at the
same time, a permanent anil secure sjs
tem of free, or at least very lightly burden
ed, trade with them. In whatever shall
lend to promote these results, the people
of the great valley of the upper Mississip
pi have a deep and momentous sectional
interest —an interest of the same kind,
though not so intense in degree, as that
which forty years ago absolutely compell
ed Mr. Jefferson to purchase Louisiana—
an interest hardly less vital to Western
prosperity than the showers which fertil
ize their lands, or the long navigable riv
ers which cheaply bear their bulky com
modities to distant markets. Texas, par
ticularly from her position, is as much a
natural and indispensable market to the
regions drained by the upper Mississippi
as are the States of Mississippi, Louisiana,
land Arkansas. And when it is remem
bered how greatly her settlement and cul
tivation, and, still more, her untrammelled
commercial relations with us, are depen
dent on her reception into the Union, it is
impossible not to feel how prominently and
vitally the great sectional interests of the
West are involved in the measure. The
Western people feel it to be so, and they
urgently call for the measure. Even the
gentleman from Ohio, as much as he hates
the measure on account of that aspect in
which it smiles on the South, sees too
clearly its highly benignant Western bear
ings, to be able to take an absolute and
unqualified stand agninst it.
Mr. Chairman, I am sensible of having
detained tbe Committee rather unneces
essarily with the general observations I
have now submitted in reference to tbe
great and unalloyed and undeniable ad
vantage* to be reaped by the North and
ing
hurling a.
character against the (MW
will benefit greatly their acetic. _
Union, is undenied and undeniable. Sure
ty they do not fall out with it and de
nounce it as odiously sectional on that ac
count. Whence, then, all their sectional
hatred, their fierce opposition to it on sec
tional grounds ? Sir, the answer which
truth compels to be given to this question
is one from which an enlarged and cath
olic patriotism turns away with shame
and sorrow. The South is to be benefited
as well as the North and Wist by the measure,
and therefore it is opposed . The frame
work of Southern society and institu
tions is to be extended and strengthened,
the Union is to be spread out and aggran
dized on the Southern sale. And these
are reasons amply sufficient with some
gentlemen to overbalance all the argu
ments growing out of the acknowledged
advantageousness of the measure to their
portion of the country. Yes, sir, the bare
curcumstauce of its having a tendency, to
fortify and aggrandize the South, is a fatal
objection. Hence the sectional tears that
arc shed, hence the sectional thunder that
is muttered, at the prospect of Texas com
ing into the Union.
Sir, let me say to gentlemen that they
owe it as a solemn duly to the country to
ponder well on the consequences, before
they determine finally to reject Texas
from our embrace for such a reason. The
South has been familiarized by long and
grievous experience, with the melancholy
truth that wrong and oppression to her
constitute, in the actual working of this
Government, no effectual objection to mea
sures which other portions of the Union
may deem conducive to their interests.—
This, surely is bad enough, this is quite
as much as we of the South can be ex
pected to bear. It will be a sadder day
for this Union than it has ever yet seen
when the further conviction shall be made
to sink deep into ti e Southern heart, that
groat measures indisputably beneficial to
all parts of the country, are to be objected
to anil rejected simply because one of their
effects will be the expanding and strength
ening of the South and of the Southern
system of society and properly. Sir, have
gentlemen duly reflected on the hideous
ness of the principle towards the South
on which they thus propose acting ?
Have they reflected that it is a principle
which puts us liierully under the ban of
the Union—which treats us as outlaws, j
as it were, from the Government, when
benefits might lull to our lot from its ac- j
lion, whilst we are still to be kept in sub-;
jection to its burdens and oppressions ? j
Sir, il gentlemen have not yet reflected i
tbut such is the precise character of the
sectional grounds of objection, to which j
opposition to the annexation of Texas is j
now almost entirely reduced, it is high ;
time they had bethought themselves of|
it. However strong may be their consei- j
entous or fanatical haired of slavery, or
anything else pertaining to the South, let
me warn them to beware how they make j
that hatred the basis of the action of this (
Government. From the very first mo
ment at which any great measure to which j
the South is averse shall be carried by the |
influence of such a feeling, or at which any J
great measure to which the South is wed-;
ded shall be lost by its influence, from that
moment it is impossible that the peo
ple of the South shall any longer refrain
from regarding this Government as their
most dangerous enemy. Yes, sir, as their
most dangerous enemy. For in what does j
enmity, the most dangerous and deadly,
consist, if not it. acting towards us on a
settled principle of hatred to our rights of
property, our whole social organization,
| and to a domestic institution which is vi
tally and intimately inwrought into the ve
ry frame-work of our existence as a peo
ple. Far distant be tbe day when this
Government shall give to the Southern
people such evidence that their dearest
rights anil destinies ate no longer to be!
safely trusted in its hands !
Yet, sir, there are not wanting those on
this floor, and elsewhere, who, either
thiough ignorance of the tremendous mine
on which they are Heading, or through
recklessness of the dreadful consequences:
of its explosion, seem to be anxiously at
work to bring on that day. They would
have Texas rejected solely on the ground of
slavery. Fullv admitting the importance
of the acquisition to the North and West,
they are never.h less, eager to forego all
the advantages that would redound to
those quarters of the Union, in order to
gratify their hostility to that institution!
which is a vital part of the South, and
which is so obnoxious in their view as to
enlist them in tv general crusade against
Southern grandeur and extension. These
are the persons, sir, who have labored
from the beginning and who continue to
struggle to this hour, to make the question
of the admission of Texas into the Union,
a sectional, anti-slavery question. Years
ago, they began systematically and indus
triously to force it upon the country as
such a question—sagely calculating that
inasmuch as the eon-slavebolding portion
of the Union possessed a preponderance
of power in Congress, it was only neces
sary to make it a sectional, slavery ques
tion, to insure forever the defeat of the
measure.
Sir, did they expect to make and urge
inch a question the South without
IVg v.
but that ot it hhmt
all our might and with all that indignant
sectional feeling it was so well calculated
to excite.
'1 he question of the annexation of Texas
a mere sectional question between the
North and South!—and made and urged
as such by the South, lorsooth! Why, sir,
have gentlemen forgotten the memorable
uttd deeply meditated speech made at
Niblo’s Garden, New York, by that Cory
phatus ol northern political sentiment and
policy, Daniel Webster, on his return
home in 1837 from the very Congress
which had just acknowledged the inde
pendence of Texas ? Have they forgotten
the not less famous letter published by the
same eminent statesman in the early part
of the year? Have they forgotten the
ceaseless Jabots and speeches of John
Quincy Adams and his co-workers in this
Hall and elsewhere, from the first moment
that the Texan question began to show it
self on the distant edge of our political ho
rizon down to this hour, when its waxing
power and expansion agitate so strongly
our vast national firmament? Huve gen
tlemen forgotten all these tilings, and the
thousand other things of like character
with which the great northern drama of
opposition to the annexation of Texas has
been filled up anil made to present an in
tense sectional, anti-Southern, anii-slaverv
aspect and design? Sir, if gentlemen cun
have forgotten all these things, commend
me to such convenient memories, I say.
But if gentlemen do indeed remember all
these things, where shall we find a paral
lel to that boldness of face with which, ac
this day, they turn round upon the South
and charge her with having been the first
to force this great national question into the
jaws of a tierce sectional feeling, from
which alone it had any danger to appro
lie ml ?
Sir, if gentlemen cannot find it in their
hearts to allow us the credit of an enlarg
ed end lofty American patriotism in this
matter, they certainly will not deny us the
possession of the ordinary attributes of
onrnmon sense and rationality in tho p»r
suit of a deeply chcrLborl ofiject. And
we should have had to have been utterly
devoid of these, if knowing, as we well
do, that the South is the weaket section,
and must be hopeless of success in anv
mere sectional contest with the North, we
had, nevertheless, been guilty of the sui
citfal folly of putting on mere sectional
grounds, to be there inevitably wrecked
and lost, a question so unequivocally na
tional, and laying so near our hearts as
that of the acquisition of Texas. I re
peat, sir, that upon the Northern and
Western opponents of this measure rests
the heavy censure of having made it a
sectional question—of having brought for
ward their fierce sectional hostility against
the slaveholding institutions of the South
as an objection to annexation—thus tak
ing a most fearful and unpatriotic sectional
ground against us. In this manner, sir,
have we of the South been put in the de
fensive. Yes, sir: we have been driven
to the alternative of either shrinking re
; creantly from the support and defence of
that system of society and property under
which our ancestors and ourselves have
lived and prospered, anti under which
our children must aud will live and pros
: per, (unless, indeed, a Haytien destiny
j shall be brought down upon them by the
1 foul and unscrupulous machinations ofour
foes on both sides of the Atlantic*,) —we
have been driven, I say, sir, to the alter
native of either shrinking from the defence
| of this system, or of standing up zealous
ly for it, and vindicating it as furnishing
uojust anil patriotic ground of objection
j to the admission of Texas into the Union.
Yes, sir; we have found ourselves obliged
to vindicate it against a formidable host
of assailants who deem it God’s service to
make war upon it, anj who avowedly
seek to hern it in now as a sort of outlaw,
with the scarcely dissembled design of
raising against it hereafter the horrid cry
of “no quarter,” whenever time and cir
cumstances may favor them in going to
that dreadful extremity.
But, sir, 1 have now reached a point at
which 1 must again turn to the gentleman
from Ohio, (Mr. Brinkerhoffi) and that no
i iconsiderab ecorpsof honorable mem tiers
o.t this floor who agree with him in their
views and wishes on this subject. Thev
: ate willing to compromise this question
with the South. So smitten are they with
a sense of the importance of our possess
ing Texas, that they stand ready and anx
ious, ffir the sake ol securing so great a
boon, to sacrifice, on the altar of their
country, one lull half of their repugnance
to slavery. They urge earnestly upon us
as a sine eyua non of the admission of Texas
into the Union, that her territory shall be
divided into two equal pans; in one of
which slavery shall be allowed, whilst in
the other it shall be forever inhibited.
And the gentleman from Ohio vehemently
assure* that if we will but accede to this
proposition, Texas shall be ours to-mor
row. And he vaunts the justice and mag
nanimity of the North in offering such a
proposition, whilst he taunts the South
with being ungenerous and selfish in re
fusing to accept iL Ay, exclaims the