William Carey Crane

“ The question "battled through" during Houston's separation from Congress, as intimated, was the tariff. As already noted, Daniel Webster, who in the history of the American Union will, from the force of succeeding events, be regarded the exponent of a tariff for protection rather than for revenue, was really, at the commencement and to the close of his career, the student of a revenue system which should promote commerce rather than manufactures ”

“ For an entire year before Houston entered the United States Senate virtual annexation, under President Polk, had existed. As a Representative from Tennessee, entering the House in 1824, one year later than Houston, Mr. Polk, among the most decided of opponents of internal improvements, of a protective tariff, and of restriction of slave territory, had been elected specially as an advocate of Texan annexation in its bearings on the questions then dividing political parties. The issue of extended slave territory was settled for a time when Texas was annexed ”

“ Another record states that Spain was sounded as to the purchase of Cuba, but that the Spanish Government, taking alarm, secured the remonstrance of England, and the threat of war, should forcible means be used to bring Cuba into the American Union. ”

“ At the opening of Congress, Dec, 1832, he announced his purpose to issue a proclamation, declaring the resistance to a collection of the revenue at the ports of any State to be treason to the United States Government; which proclamation soon appeared. Through the efforts of Mr. Clay, a compromise measure modifying the tariff was carried through Congress, and the danger of armed hostility was avoided. It is due to history, and to an impartial estimate of the course of Sam Houston as Senator from Texas, to state these facts: Gen. ”

“ In November, 1832, just after the vote which was to make Jackson President for a second term, the Convention of South Carolina passed the ordinance of "Nullification," so called from these declarations:—That the existing ordinance of Congress as to the tariff is "null and void, and no law, nor binding on this State, its officers, or its citizens"; and farther declaring that no "duties on imports "were to be "paid within the State after Feb. ”