They are
already looking to Mexico. If left to themselves, they would annex her
and all her neighbors, and we should lose our highway to the Pacific
coast. They would acquire it, and to us it would be lost forever.
The North will consider well before she consents to this, before she
even permits it. Ever since 1820, we have pursued, in this respect,
a uniform policy. The North will hesitate long, before, by accepting
the condition you propose, she deprives the nation of the valuable
privilege, the unquestionable right, of acquiring new territory in an
honorable way.
I have tried to look upon these propositions of the majority of the
committee as true measures of pacification. I have listened patiently
to all that has been said in their favor. But I am still unconvinced,
or, rather, I am convinced that they will do nothing for the Union.
They will prove totally inadequate; may perhaps be positively
mischievous. The North, the free States, will not adopt them,--will
not consent to these new endorsements of an institution which they do
not like, which the believe to the injurious to the interests of the
republic; and if they did adopt them, as they could only do by a
sacrifice of principles which you should not expect, the South would
not be satisfied: the slave States would not fail to find pretexts
for a course of action upon which I think they have already determined.
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