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ity; strong enough to laugh Colonel Benton and Mr. Wright in the face; strong enough, not merely to divide Mr. Butler's last crust with him, but to snatch the whole of it; strong enough to ejaculate Mr. Van Buren out of the windowunder whom they had once triumphed-on whom they rallied again in six months after the defeat of 1840, and who had been their candidate as notoriously and avowedly as Mr. Clay had been ours—and of whom no man of any party will deny, that in point of accomplishment and talent and experience of public affairs, he is immeasurably Mr. Polk's superior; strong enough to have dissolved that convention in a half an hour, had it not conceded their utmost demands-ruining if they could not rule; if Mr. Polk should be disposed to do nothing, do you believe such a party, or such a faction as this, would permit him to do nothing? No. No. Desperately, weakly, fatally, does he deceive himself who will not see, that everything which an Executive, elected expressly to do this deed, can do, will be done, and done at once! He will put it forward in his very first message. He will put it forward as the one, grand measure of his party, and of his administration. Nothing will be left unstirred to effect it. The farewell words of General Jackson will be rung in admiring and subservient ears. Aye, that drum shall be beaten, which might call the dead of all his battles to the "midnight review," in shadowy files! The measure will not be attempted again, in the first instance, in the form of a treaty, requiring two thirds of the senate, but in the form of a law, requiring a majority of only Do you say such a majority cannot be commanded? Do not be too sure of that. I pray you, give no vote, withhold no vote, on such a speculation as that. Do not, because President Tyler has not been able to command a majority President Tyler, without a party, with one whole division of the Democratic party, with Colonel Benton and Mr. Wright at its head, against him; with the Southern Whigs, under the seasonable and important lead of Mr. Clay, against him to a man—do not, because under these special and temporary circumstances, he has not been able to obtain a majority, therefore, lay the flattering unction to your soul, that when a president who has a party, and that party a majority of the people, flushed with a recent victory won on this precise issue, shall try his hand at

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the business; when Colonel Benton-the temporary and special circumstances of his recent resistance having subsided — shall resume his natural and earlier position; and "La Salle" and "Americanus" shall be himself again; when Southern Whigs, no longer rallying to the lead of Mr. Clay, shall resume their natural position, or shall divide on the question; when the whole tactics of party, the united or general strength of the South, the vast and multiform influence of a strong Executive shall be combined; when the measure comes to be pressed, under every specious name, by aid of every specious topic of patriotism and aggrandizement; when, if any one, or two, or ten, or twenty members of congress should manifest symptoms of recusancy, or should try the effect of a little "sweet, reluctant, amorous delay," the weird sisters of ambitious hearts shall play before their eyes images of foreign missions, and departments, and benches of justice do not deceive yourselves into the belief, that the majority of one will not be secured. I speak now of the admission of Texas as a mere territory. The erection of that territory into States will be a very different undertaking — later, less promising, a far more dreadful trial of the ties of Union. Of that I have something to say hereafter; but I have no doubt whatever, and I feel it to be an urgent duty to declare it, that the territory, as territory, will be admitted in twelve months after Mr. Polk's election, unless some extraordinary interposition of the people, on which I dare not speculate, shall prevent it.

[Mr. Choate then proceeded to observe upon a letter, which he had read in the "National Intelligencer," signed by seven prominent members of the Democratic party in New York, including the accomplished editor of the "Evening Post," in which the writers declare their purpose of supporting Mr. Polk, but recommend the election of members of congress "who will reject the unwarrantable scheme now pressed on the country." He remarked on the concessions of the letter, to wit: "that the Baltimore convention had placed the Democratic party at the North in a position of great difficulty;" that it exposed the party to the constant taunt "that the convention rejected Mr. Van Buren and nominated Mr. Polk, for reasons connected with the immediate annexation of Texas;” "that it went still further and interpolated into the party creed a new doctrine, hitherto unknown among us, at war with some of our established principles, and abhorrent to the opinions and feelings of a great majority of Northern freemen!" And he doubted whether a State which should give its vote for a president nominated solely for the very purpose of annexing Texas, would or could, in the same breath, elect members of

congress to go and defeat the "scheme," "unwarrantable" enough, no doubt, but yet the precise and single "scheme" which Mr. Polk was brought forward to accomplish, and whether they, or such as they, who surrendered to the candidate at Baltimore, would be very likely to beard and baffle the incumbent at Washington. He then resumed :]

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The election of Mr. Polk, then, will, or may probably annex Texas as a territory. The election of Mr. Clay defeats or postpones it indefinitely. Some persons pretend to doubt, or at least seem to deny this. But do they do him, themselves, and the great subject, justice? Read his letter upon this subject; observe the broad and permanent grounds of exclusion which he there sketches; advert to the well-weighed declaration, that so long as any considerable opposition to the measure shall be manifested, he will resist it; and you cannot fail to see that unless you yourselves, unless Massachusetts and Vermont and Ohio, - should withdraw their opposition, for his term at least, you are safe, and all are safe. That letter, in my judgment, makes him a title to every anti-Texas vote in America. The circumstances under which it was given to the world, I happened well to know. It was before either convention had assembled at Baltimore. It was as yet, to me at least, uncertain what ground Mr. Van Buren would take. Warm friends of Mr. Clay in congress would have dissuaded him from immediate publication. They feared its effect even on the Whig convention itself; they feared its wider and more permanent effect. Wait a little, they said. Feel the pulse of the delegates as they come to Washington. Attend for a few days the rising voice of the general press of the South. He rejected these counsels of indecision, and directed it to be given to the country. In my judgment, that act saved the country. It fixed and rallied the universal Whig opinion upon this subject instantly, and everywhere. It suspended the warm feelings of the South, until its sober second thought could discern, as now it has begun to discern, that fair and tempting as this forbidden fruit shows to the sense, it brings with it death, and all woe, with loss of Eden. The position which Mr. Clay held, -the inhabitant of a slave State; his birth-place Virginia; the part he transacted in the Missouri controversy; his known and intense Americanism of feeling, eager enough, eager in the man as in the boy, to lay hold of every occa

sion to carry up his country to the loftiest summit of a durable and just glory, and therefore not disinclined to mere enlargement of territory, if the acquisition had been just, prudent, equitable, honorable this felicity of position enabled him to do what few other men of even equal capacity and patriotism could do; enabled him to quench in the spark, if now the people sustain him, this stupendous conception of madness and of guilt.

If the election of Mr. Polk, then, may annex Texas, and that of Mr. Clay defeat or indefinitely postpone it, what are the moral duties of the opponents of annexation, of all parties? You are a Democrat, for example, and you would, on every other account than this of Texas, desire the success of the Democratic ticket. You are an Abolitionist, and without expecting the success of your ticket, you would desire to give it the utmost practicable appearance of growth and strength. But can you, in sense and fairness, say, that all the other good which, even on your principles, the election of Mr. Polk, or the exhibition of a growing vote for Mr. Birney, would accomplish, or all the other evils which either of these results would prevent, would compensate for the various and the transcendent evil of annexation? Can you doubt, when you calmly weigh all the other good which you achieve by effecting your object against the mischief you do by annexation, -can you doubt that the least thing which you owe your conscience, your country, the utmost which pride and consistency have a right to exact of you, neutrality? You will not say, You will not say, for instance, that you believe, that a mere postponement of Democratic ascendency for five years will permanently and irreparably impair the Constitution, and the prosperity of our country, or bereave her of a ray of her glory? She can endure so long, even you do not doubt, the evil of the politics which you disapprove. She can afford to wait so long, even you will admit, for the politics which you prefer. But the evil of annexation is as immediate as irretrievable, and as eternal as it is enormous! Time, terms of presidential office, ages, instead of healing, will but display, will but exasperate, the immedicable wound! Yes, yes! He who, some space hereafter-how long, how brief that space, you may not all taste of death until you know he who another Thucydides, another Sismondi- shall observe and

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shall paint a Union dissolved, the silver cord loosed, the golden bowl broken at the fountain; he who shall observe and shall paint the nation's flag folded mournfully, and laid aside in the silent chamber where the memorials of renown and grace, now dead, are gathered together; who shall record the ferocious factions, the profligate ambition, the hot rivalry, the wars of hate, the truces of treachery, -which shall furnish the matter of the history of alienated States, till one after another burns out and falls from its place on high, high, he shall entitle this stained and mournful chapter, the Consequences of Annexation.

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But look at this business a little more in its details.

I will not move the question of its effect on American slavery. Whether it will transplant the stricken race from old States to new; whether it will concentrate it on a different, larger or smaller area than it now covers, whether the result of this again would be to increase or diminish its numbers, its sufferings, and its chances of ultimate emancipation—this is a speculation from which I retire. I repeat what I had the honor to say in the debate on the treaty, that the avowed and the direct object of annexation certainly is, to prevent the abolition of slavery on a vast region which would else become free. The immediate effect intended and secured in the first instance, therefore, certainly is the diffusion and increase of slavery. So far we see. So much we know. More than that, no man can be certain that he sees or knows. Whether this is to work an amelioration of the status of slavery while it lasts, or to shorten its duration, is in His counsels, "who out of evil still educes good in infinite progression." The means we see are evil. The first effect is evil. The end is uncertain. But, if it were certain and were good, we may not do evil that good may come. While, therefore, I feel it to be my duty dis tinctly to say, that I would leave to the masters of slaves every guaranty of the Constitution and the Union-the Constitution as it is, the Union as it is, without which there is no security for you or for them—no, not for a day,-I still controvert the power, I deny the morality, I tremble for the consequences, of annexing an acre of new territory, for the mere purpose of dif fusing this great evil, this great curse, over a wider surface of American earth. Still less would I, for such a purpose merely,

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