CHAPTER XXI.
The records of the Twenty-ninth Congress, whose first session was held from December 1, 1845, to August 10, 1846, have these entries: "Texas: Senators, Samuel Houston, took his seat March 30, 1846; Thomas J. Rusk, took his seat March 26, 1846, Representatives: David S. Kaufman, took his seat June 1, 1846; Timothy Pillsbury, took his seat June 10, 1846." As Senator Rusk was the first to arrive, four days after he had been introduced to the Senate and had been qualified, it was his office to introduce his colleague, who likewise took his oath a second time to defend the Constitution and laws of the United States; an oath never to be abjured till his quiet death at home in 1863.
It was a marked coincidence that Houston should have entered Congress again after eighteen years with these three suggestive confirmations of the principles he had unswervingly maintained: first, to be associated with the same great leaders whom he had met in the House; second, to meet them when, after the tests of their extreme principles resulting from the experience of twenty years, the ardor of youthful convictions was tempered by age; and third, to find the Union of the States such that no conflicts of political leaders, then met in Congress, and afterward met on the field of battle, could overthrow the equilibrium of balanced rights. As we have observed, James K. Polk, then a fresh Representative from Tennessee, was now Chief Magistrate. In the Senate were the three great leaders, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun; the first made to yield to a low tariff, and specially conciliatory on the question of slavery; the latter after the honors of a War Secretary, and of the Vice-Presidency, calm and courtly, though unchanged in his theoretical convictions ; while the second was, as twenty-five years before, the same leader in compromise and pacification. Besides these, conspicuous in the Senate were the Claytons of Delaware, Yulee and Westcott of Florida, Berrien and Colquitt of Georgia, Bright of Indiana, Crittenden of Kentucky, Soule of Louisiana, Evans of Maine, Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, Davis of Massachusetts, Cass of Michigan, Walker of Mississippi, Woodbury of New Hampshire, Dayton of New Jersey, Dickinson and Dix of
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