Anti-Texass Legion: Protest of some free men, states and presses against the Texass rebellion, against the laws of nature and of nations Page: 26 of 72
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THOMAS BRANAGAN.
as a free citizen inherits in his own person; and a planter that pur
chases two hundred negroes, not only replenishes his purse thereby,
but also gains one hundred and twenty times as much influence in
the nation, as the virtuous and honorable patriot who nobly refuses
to prostitute his political and religious character, by participating in
such unparalleled duplicity, hypocrisy, and villany. Is such in.
equality consistent with a republican form of government; is it con-
sistent with justice, generosity, or even common sense ? No; it is
a canker that eats, and will of itself eventually destroy our consti.
tution. If there was no other enemy to excite our fears and alarm
our sensibility, this surely is sufficient. No less than sixty odd thou.
sand slaves annually increase the representation.
If your slavers wish to effect a counter revolution in the minds of
your injured fellow citizens, you must first cause them to unlearn
what they learned in " the times that tried men's souls ;" you must
destroy their memories; you must draw a mighty veil before their in-
tellectual eyes, to screen the tragical end of slavery in the now re-
public of Hayti; you must consign every copy of the Rights of Man,
and every other patriotic work, disseminated over the face of the
earth, to the flames; you must destroy the liberty of the press, that
glorious privilege of freemen; you must finally destroy our post offi-
ces, and every conduit and vehicle of intelligence. Before you can
fetter the understanding and blind the eyes of your fellow citizens,
you must accomplish all these things and many more.
I think and believe, that to sanction and support slavery in Texas,
is a national crime that would have disgraced Sodom and Gomorrah.
My mind is much affected by the case of the injured Indians, and by
the Texas mania; for sure I am, unless the friends of freedom strain
every nerve, the tyrants of the south will gain their objects, as they
have two or three times before.
[Under the Mexican government slavery has been totally abolished
in Texas, and elsewhere. The Texian rebels could have effected
nothing but for the assistance of the southern states, (backed by
northern doughfaces,) who have as fully waged the treasonable, pira-
tical war they excited, as if it had been by them formally declared.
The number of principled men in Texas is too small to redeem the
country and their cause from the fathomless abyss of misery, degra.
dation, and infamy into which this unprecedented establishment and
perpetuation of slavery must inevitably plunge them, as well as the
United States. The slave-mongers, slave-politicians, slave-presses,
and slave-senators, have foisted the recognition of the independence
of that slave region, and are urging its incorporation into the United
States as rapidly as possible. The monstrous outrage against the
laws of nature and of nations, unsurpassed by the blackest page of
history, is fast tending to its fatal consummation!]
The diabolical principle, which confers such a super-abundance of
the paramount rights of suffrage and sovereignty upon a part of the
citizens, accordingly as they enslave and torture their fellow men, to
the great injury of the virtuous and honorable part of society-this
infernal practice must be abolished, or the union must be dissolved,
that is, if the spirit of '76 is not completely obliterated from the
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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/m1/26/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.