s or the Supreme Court
are invested with this power. If the Federal Government, in all, or
any, of its departments, is to prescribe the limits of its own
authority, and the States are bound to submit to the decision, and are
not to be allowed to examine and decide when the barriers of the
Constitution shall be overleaped, this is practically, "a government
without limitation of powers." The States are at once reduced to mere
petty corporations, and the people are entirely at your mercy. I have
but one word more to add. In all the efforts that have been made by
South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional laws which Congress has
extended over her, she has kept steadily in view the preservation of
the Union, by the only means by which she believes it can be long
preserved--a firm, manly, and steady resistance against
usurpation. . . . Sir, if, acting on these high motives,--if, animated
by that ardent love of liberty, which has always been the most
prominent trait in the Southern character, we should be hurried beyond
the bounds of a cold and calculating prudence; who is there, with one
noble and generous sentiment in his bosom, who would not be disposed,
in the language of Burke, to exclaim, "You must pardon something to
the spirit of liberty"?

SAM HOUSTON.

~1793=1863.~

GENERAL SAM HOUSTON, first President of Texas, was born in Rockbridge
County, Virginia, but his widowed mother removed in his childhood to
Tennessee and settled near the Cherokee Country. Here he was much with
the Indians and was adopted by a chief named Oolooteka, who called him
Coloneh (the Rover).

In 1813 he became a soldier in the Creek war and was almost fatally
wounded at the battle of Tohopeka, or Horse-shoe Bend, Alabama. In
1818 he decided to study law and went to Nashville, where he became
quite successful as a lawyer and soon received political honors, being
elected member of Congress in 1823 and governor of Tennessee in 1827.

In 1829 he left Tennessee for the West, spent three years in Arkansas
among the Cherokees who had emigrated thither, his old friend
Oolooteka being one of them; and in 1832 went to Texas, with which
State his after life is connected. He was made Commander-in-Chief of
the Texan forces in the struggle for independence against Mexico, and
by the battle of San Jacinto, 1836, he put an end to the war, and in
the same year he was elected first President of the Republic of Texas.
He was elected again in 1841