The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 18, July 1914 - April, 1915 Page: 46
This periodical is part of the collection entitled: Southwestern Historical Quarterly and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Texas State Historical Association.
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The Southwestern Historical Quarterly
The only other evidence I have found that the people of Texas
were taking an interest in the disposition of the newly acquired
territories is found in an editorial of that day, which indicates
that the course of the federal government was not entirely sat-
isfactory to Texas. The editor complained that, although the
South had furnished the greater number of men in the war
with Mexico, Congress was trying to defraud the South of its
rights in the territory thus acquired."
3. Attitude of United States Senators from. Texas
The Texas representatives in Congress were in the midst of
the struggle over the organization of the Mexican cession, and
hence could not avoid taking part in it. Texas was represented in
the Senate by Sam Houston and Thomas J. Rusk, both elected
in 1846. Rusk had served Texas well during the revolution,
fighting side by side with Houston at San Jacinto; and later,
during the Republic, he had served as chief justice. While a
member of the Senate he voted on all occasions with the other
Southern members; but as he died before the real "tug of war"
came in Texas, in regard to secession, his influence on the move-
ment was not great.
Houston on the other hand, was so closely identified with the
whole movement, that the story of his life becomes a part of
the secession movement in Texas from 1848 to 1861. Although
a strict constructionist, and always jealous of the rights of Texas,
he was at the same time a strong Union man. In a speech de-
livered in the Senate July 3, 1850, on the right of Texas to
Santa F, he defined his idea of sovereignty in the following words:
"The Sovereign power of this Union is shared by every free man,
its embodiment passing through the States from the people; a
portion of it is centered in the Federal Constitution, and thereby
that becomes the supreme law of the land and is the only embodi-
ment of sovereignty."' He was a slaveholder and accepted the
institution as a part of the social system in which he found him-
self. On one occasion he said that he was neither the enemy nor
the propagandist of slavery. While he most strenuously objected
8Nacogdoches Times, September 24, 1848.
'Crane, Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston, 387.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 18, July 1914 - April, 1915, periodical, 1915; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101064/m1/52/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.