Address on the annexation of Texas, and the aspect of slavery in the United States, in connection therewith: delivered in Boston November 14 and 18, 1845 Page: 42 of 56
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42
period, too, had scarcely terminated, when the second annexation,
effected by the negotiation with France for the purchase
of Louisiana, extended its limits and gave it still
another resource in the growth and manufacture of sugar.
With not quite so long an interval, the purchase of Florida
constituted the third annexation, securing so much additional
territory to the dominion of Slavery.
The effect of these past annexations upon slavery is not a
matter of speculation; the facts are before us. By the first,
the door was closed against the hope of its early abolition; by
the second, not only its extension, but the increase of its
political power, and all the consequences involved in the
Missouri compromise, were rendered inevitable; of the third,
the disgrace and the cost of the Florida war were the first
fruits, while the admission of one divisible into two new Slave
States is the forthcoming consequence. The results, exhibited,
as some like to calculate them, in figures, show an extent
of almost a million of square miles, equal to about six hundred
millions of acres, of slave-holding territory brought within the
Union by virtue of the first three annexations, to which Texas
will add more than one third as much more, -all which,
together with the territory included in the old Slave-holding
States, will make the aggregate amount of more than
1,500,000 square miles, equal to one thousand millions of
acres, of slave-holding territory within the United States, including
Texas. They also show the present slave population
in the country to be three millions, distributed already
throughout one half of the States of the Union, and thereby
giving to the Slave States, according to the rule of the Constitution,
as tested in the last national election, a proportion
of political power in the House of Representatives and in the
Electoral Colleges sufficient for the choice of one member
by less than six thousand votes, while the Free States are
hardly entitled to one member for upwards of ten thousand
votes.
By such facts - and I might proceed much further with
interesting and instructive statistical details - it is seen at a
glance, that the annexation of slave-holding territory has not
as yet proved the means of furnishing a,burial-ground for
slavery; and they who will reflect will be enabled to satisfy
themselves, from the proofs before us, that the policy of annexation
has interposed from time to time an effectual obstacle
to the means in progress for the diminution of slavery,
and has been in fact the one thing needful to its steady and
permanent increase. It is easy, I think, to show, that, slow
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Phillips, Stephen C. Address on the annexation of Texas, and the aspect of slavery in the United States, in connection therewith: delivered in Boston November 14 and 18, 1845, book, January 1, 1845; Boston. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2361/m1/42/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.