How about the Father of Texas?
Sam Houston, President of the Republic of Texas;
"I will endeavor to say a few words in behalf of the Union, and the necessity of union to preserve it, which I trust will not fall unheeded. The condition of the country is such, the dangers which beset it are so numerous, the foes of the Union so implacable and energetic, that no risk should be heeded by him who has a voice to raise in its behalf; and so long as I have strength to stand, I will peril even health in its cause.
I had felt an interest in this occasion, on many accounts. It is said a crisis is impending. The clamor of disunion is heard in the land. The safety of the Government is threatened; and it seemed to me that the time had come for a renewal of our vows of fidelity to the Constitution and to interchange, one with the other, sentiments of devotion to the whole country. I begin to feel that the issue really is upon us, which involves the perpetuity of the Government which we have received from our fathers. Were we to fail to pay our tributes to its worth, and to enlist in its defense, we would be unworthy longer to enjoy it.
It has been my misfortune to peril my all for the Union. So indissolubly connected is my life, my history, my hopes, my fortunes, with it, that when it falls, I would ask that with it might close my career, that I might not survive the destruction of the shrine that I had been taught to regard as holy and inviolate, since my boyhood. I have beheld it, the fairest fabric of Government God ever vouchsafed to man, more than a half century. May it never be my fate to stand sadly gazing on its ruins! To be deprived of it, after enjoying it so long, would be a calamity, such as no people yet have endured.
Upwards of forty-seven years ago, I enlisted, a mere boy, to sustain the National flag and in defense of a harassed frontier, now the abode of a dense civilization. Then disunion was never heard of, save a few discordant notes from the Hartford Convention. It was anathematized by every patriot in the land, and the concocters of the scheme were branded as traitors. The peril I then underwent, in common with my fellow-soldiers, in behalf of the Union, would have been in vain, unless the patriotism of the nation had arisen against these disturbers of the public peace. With what heart could these gallant men again volunteer in defense of the Union, unless the Union could withstand the shock of treason and overturn the traitors? It did this; and when again, in 1836, I volunteered to aid in transplanting American liberty to this soil, it was with the belief that the Constitution and the Union were to be perpetual bless*ings to the human race,—that the success of the experiment of our fathers was beyond dispute, and that whether under the banner of the Lone Star or that many-starred banner of the Union, I could point to the land of Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson, as the land blest beyond all other lands, where freedom would be eternal and Union un*broken. It concerns me deeply, as it does every one here, that these bright anticipations should be realized; and that it should be continued not only the proudest nationality the world has ever produced, but the freest and the most perfect. I have seen it extend from the wilds of Tennessee, then a wilderness, across the Missis*sippi, achieve the annexation of Texas, scaling the Rocky Mountains in its onward march, sweeping the valleys of California, and laving its pioneer foot*steps in the waves of the Pacific. I have seen this mighty progress, and it still re*mains free and independent. Power, wealth, expansion, victory, have followed in its path, and yet the aegis of the Union has been broad enough to en*compass all. Is not this worth perpetuating? Will you exchange this for all the hazards, the anarchy and carnage of civil war? Do you believe that it will be dissevered and no shock felt in society? You are asked to plunge into a revolution; but are you told how to get out of it? Not so; but it is to be a leap in the dark—a leap into an abyss, whose horrors would even fright the mad spirits of disunion who tempt you on.
Our forefathers saw the danger to which freedom would be subjected, from the helpless condition of disunited States; and, to “form a more perfect Union,” they established this Government. They saw the effect of foreign influence on rival States, the effect of dissensions at home, and to strengthen all and perpetuate all, to bind all together, yet leave all free, they gave us the Constitution and the Union. Where are the evidences that their patriotic labor was in vain? Have we not emerged from an infant’s to a giant’s strength? Have not empires been added to our domain, and States been created? All the blessings which they promised their posterity have been vouchsafed; and millions now enjoy them, who without this Union would to-day be oppressed and down-trodden in far-off foreign lands!
What is there that is free that we have not? Are our rights invaded and no Government ready to protect them? No! Are our institutions wrested from us and others foreign to our taste forced upon us? No! Is the right of free speech, a free press, or free suffrage taken from us? No! Has our property been taken from us and the Government failed to interpose when called upon? No, none of these! The rights of the States and the rights of individuals are still maintained. We have yet the Constitution, we have yet a judiciary, which has never been appealed to in vain—we have yet just laws and officers to administer them; and an army and navy, ready to maintain any and every constitutional right of the citizen. Whence then this clamor about disunion? Whence this cry of protection to property or disunion, when even the very loudest in the cry, declared under their Senatorial oaths, but a few months since, that no protection was necessary? Are we to sell reality for a phantom?
There is no longer a holy ground upon which the footsteps of the demagogue may not fall. One by one the sacred things placed by patriotic hands upon the altar of our liberties, have been torn down. The Declaration of our Independence is jeered at. The farewell counsels of Washington are derided. The charm of those historic names which make glorious our past has been broken, and now the Union is no longer held sacred, but made secondary to the success of party and the adoption of abstractions. We hear of secession—“peaceable secession.” We are to believe that this people, whose progressive civilization has known no obstacles, but has already driven back one race and is fast Americanizing another, who have conquered armies and navies,—whose career has been onward and never has receded, be the step right or wrong, is at last quietly and calmly to be denationalized, to be rent into fragments, sanctioned by the Constitution, and there not only be none of the incidents of revolution, but amid peace and happiness we are to have freedom from abolition clamor, security to the institution of slavery, and a career of glory under a Southern Confederacy, which we can never attain in our present condition! When we deny the right of a State to secede, we are pointed to the resolves of chivalric South Carolina and other States; and are told, “Let them go out and you can not whip them back.” My friends, there will be no necessity of whipping them back. They will soon whip themselves, and will not be worth whipping back. Deprived of the protection of the Union, of the aegis of the Constitution, they would soon dwindle into petty States, to be again rent in twain by dissensions or through the ambition of selfish chieftains, and would become a prey to foreign powers."
"Talk of frightening the North into measures by threats of dissolving the Union! It is child’s play and folly. It is all the Black Republican leaders want. American blood, North nor South, has not yet become so ignoble as to be chilled by threats. Strife begets strife, threat begets threat, and taunt begets taunt, and these disunionists know it. American blood brooks no such restraints as these men would put upon it. I would blush with shame for America, if I could believe that one vast portion of my countrymen had sunk so low that childish threats would intimidate them."
“But if, through division in the ranks of those opposed to Mr. Lincoln, he should be elected, we have no excuse for dissolving the Union.”
“The Union is worth more than Mr. Lincoln, and if the battle is to be fought for the Constitution, let us fight it in the Union and for the sake of the Union.”
“Let past differences be forgotten in the determination to unite against sectionalism.”
“Whenever an encroachment is made upon our constitutional rights, I am ready to peril my life to re*sist it; but let us first use constitutional means.”
“Let the people say to these abolition agitators of the North, and to the disunion agitators of the South, ‘You can not dissolve this Union. We will put you both down; but we will not let the Union go!’”
