Anti-Texass Legion: Protest of some free men, states and presses against the Texass rebellion, against the laws of nature and of nations Page: 29 of 72
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WILLIAM E. CHANNING.
and just jealousy forbid us to incorporate with our confederacy ? In
attaching Texas to ourselves, we provoke hostilities, and at the same
time expose new points of attack to our foes. Vulnerable at so many
points, we shall need a vast military force. Great armies will re-
quire great revenues, and raise up great chieftains. Are we tired of
freedom, that we are prepared to place it under such guardians ? Is
the republic bent on dying by its own hands ? Does not every man
feel, that, with war for our habit, our institutions cannot be pre-
served ? If ever a country were bound to peace, it is this. Peace is
our great interest. In peace our resources are to be developed, the
true interpretation of the constitution to be established, and the inter.
fering claims of liberty and order to be adjusted. In peace we are
to discharge our great debt to the human race, and to diffuse freedom
by manifesting its fruits. A country has no right to adopt a policy,
however gainful, which, as it may foresee, will determine it to a ca-
reer of war. A nation, like an individual, is bound to seek, even
by sacrifices, a position, which will favor peace, justice, and the ex-
ercise of a beneficent influence on the world. A nation, provoking
war by cupidity, by encroachment, and, above all, by efforts to pro.
pagate the curse of slavery, is alike false to itself, to God, and to the
human race.
The annexation of Texas, I have said, will extend and perpetuate
slavery. It is fitted, and, still more, intended to do so. On this
point there can be no doubt. As far back as the year 1829, the an-
nexation of Texas was agitated in the Southern and Western States;
and it was urged on the ground of the strength and extension it
would give to the slave-holding interest. In a series of essays, as-
cribed to a gentleman, now a senator in Congress, it was maintained,
that five or six slave-holding states would by this measure be added to
the Union; and he even intimated that as many as nine States as
large as Kentucky might be formed within the limits of Texas. In
Virginia, about the same time, calculations were made as to the in-
creased value which would thus be given to slaves, and it was even
said, that this acquisition would rise the price fifty per cent. Of late
the language on this subject is most explicit. The great argument
for annexing Texas is, that it will strengthen " the peculiar institu
tions" of the south, and open a new and vast field for slavery.
Nor is the worst told. As I have before intimated, and it cannot
be too often repeated, we shall not only quicken the domestic slave-
trade; we shall give a new impulse to the foreign. This, indeed,
we have pronounced in our laws to be felony; but we make our laws
cobwebs, when we offer to rapacious men strong motives for their
violation. Open a market for slaves in an unsettled country, with a
sweep of sea-coast, and at such distance from the seat of government
that laws may be evaded with impunity, and how can you exclude
slaves from Africa ? It is well known that cargoes have been landed
in Louisiana. What is to drive them from Texas ? In incorporat-
ing this region with the Union to make it a slave-country, we send
the kidnapper to prowl through the jungles, and to dart, like a beast
of prey, on the defenceless villages of Africa; we chain the help.
less, despairing victims; crowd them into the fotid, pestilential slave.
a.
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Anti-Texass Legion. Anti-Texass Legion: Protest of some free men, states and presses against the Texass rebellion, against the laws of nature and of nations, book, January 1, 1845; Albany. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2356/m1/29/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.