me with the principles of disunion. That I announce. That is a subject that shall be ruled out of our social intercourse, while it meets my unqualified condemnation without attaching it to the gentleman himself. [Applause in the galleries.]
The Presiding Officer. Order!
Mr. Houston. I take the Globe, and expect to have them all filed away, and I may occasionally try to refresh my reminiscences, and regale myself by adverting to some scenes that have been exciting in the Senate of the United States, and throughout the nation. I shall hope that they are things that have been, but are not; for no sound will be so delightful to me in retirement as to hear that the Union is more closely bound together every day, cemented by affection and reciprocal kind offices; and that that crimination and recrimination which has existed heretofore, has died away; that all agitation has subsided, and is forgotten; that like one great family in a grand migration to a happier condition of national existence, we are marching hand in hand, and that our people feel one common cause, one common home, one common fraternity throughout the broad Union.
But, Mr. President, notwithstanding the gentleman's characteristic amenity and politeness, his great amiability of disposition, and his bland kindness of demeanor, I am satisfied that, when he gave utterance to these sentiments, he could not have been in earnest, and that they were merely an ebullition of the moment—nothing more. He says:
"The Senator talks about the Union and sings hosannas in its praise. I have heard those songs sung before; and I must say that I have never heard them sung by a Southern man without suspecting at once that his eye was upon the Presidency of the United States."
Sir, that would argue, if I were disposed to be suspicious—but I am very unsuspecting in my nature—that the gentleman who is ready to draw deductions from the conduct of others, was always looking at that prize himself, and that on the least indication, as he believed, of a similar feeling in others, he was ready to detect it and set it down to their account rather as an offense than as a commendable quality. Again:
"It may require a great deal of charity, looking at the antecedents of that Senator, and the remarks he has made here to-day, to suppose, although his political life is about to end, that he has not lost sight of that long and lingering hope of his— the great folly of his life."
Now, sir, I might call on the gentleman for some evidence of that, but I will not do it. I do not believe it is tangible, and I do not wish to occupy time unnecessarily; but, really, I have never endeavored to chalk out a course of policy in my life, with reference to the Presidency, that seemed half so significant as to promise the dissolution of the Union and the formation of a Southern republic; for that clearly indicates ulterior views on the part of the Senator, with a mind that was suspicious—not with me! Again:
"Sir, it is this very intensity of feeling which the Senator from Texas has so long exhibited for the Union, over and at the sacrifice of the interests of his own section, that the people of his State have decided to put him in retirement; and, for one, I can not but rejoice at that decision."
