The Executive feels as deeply as any of your honorable body the necessity of such action on the part of the slaveholding States as will secure to the fullest extent every right they possess. Self-preservation, if not a manly love of liberty inspired by our past history, prompts this determination.
But he can not feel that these dictate hasty and unconcerted action, nor can he reconcile to his mind the idea that our safety demands an immediate separation from the Government ere we have stated our grievances or demanded redress. A high resolve to maintain our constitutional rights, and, failing to obtain them, to risk the perils of revolution even as our fathers risked it, should, in my opinion, actuate every citizen of Texas; but we should remember that we owe duties and obligations to States having rights in common with us; and whose institutions are the same as ours.
No aggression can come upon us which will not be visited upon them; and whatever our action may be, it should be of that character which will bear us blameless to posterity, should the step be fatal to the interests of those States. While deploring the election of Messrs. Lincoln and Hamlin, the Executive yet has scon in it no cause for the immediate and separate secession of Texas. Believing, however, that the time had come when the Southern States should co-operate and counsel together to devise means for the maintenance of their constitutional rights, and to demand redress for the grievances they have been suffering at the hands of many of the Northern States, he has directed his efforts to that end. Believing that a convention of the character contemplated by the joint resolution of February 16, 1858, should be held, and desiring that the people of Texas should be represented in the same, and have full opportunity to elect delegates reflecting their will, he ordered an election for that purpose to be held on the first Monday in February next. Although since that time four of the Southern States have declared themselves no longer members of the Union; yet he confidently looks forward to the assemblage of such a body. A majority of the Southern States have as yet taken no action, and the efforts of our brethren of the border are now directed toward securing unity of the entire South.
The interests of Texas are closely identified with the remaining States; and if, by joining her counsels with theirs, such assurances can be obtained of a determination on the part of the Northern States to regard our constitutional rights as will induce the States which have declared themselves out of the Union to rescind their action, the end attained will silence whatever reproaches the rash and inconsiderate may heap upon us. Texas, although identified by her institutions with the States which have declared themselves out of the Union, can not forget her relation to the border States. Pressed for years by the whole weight of abolition influence, these States have stood as barriers against its approach. Those who ask Texas to desert them now should remember that in our days of gloom, when doubt hung over the fortunes of our little army, and the cry for help went out, while some of those who seek to induce us to follow their precipitate lead, looked coldly on us, these States sent men and money to our aid.
Their best blood was shed here in our defense, and if we are to be influenced by considerations other than our own safety, the fact that these States still seem determined to maintain their ground and fight the battle of the Constitution within the Union, should have equal weight with us as with those States which have no higher claim upon us, and who without cause on our part have surrendered the ties which made us one.
