d from
Mexico as New Mexico. She claimed that it belonged to her by conquest
and by her admission into the United States, and she was ready to
maintain her claim by force of arms. Nor was this all. A man must be
ignorant of the history of the country who does not know, that, at the
commencement of 1850, there was great agitation throughout the whole
South. Who does not know that six or seven of the largest States of the
South had already taken measures looking toward secession; were
preparing for disunion in some way? They concurred apparently, at least
some of them, with Texas, while Texas was prepared or preparing to
enforce her rights by force of arms. Troops were enlisted by her, and
many thousand persons in the South disaffected towards the Union, or
desirous of breaking it up, were ready to make common cause with Texas;
to join her ranks, and see what they could make in a war to establish
the right of Texas to New Mexico. The public mind was disturbed. A
considerable part of the South was disaffected towards the Union, and in
a condition to adopt any course that should be violent and destructive.

What then was to be done, as far as Texas was concerned? Allow me to
say, Gentlemen, there are two sorts of foresight. There is a military
foresight, which sees what will be the result of an appeal to arms; and
there is also a statesmanlike foresight, which looks not to the result
of battles and carnage, but to the results of political disturbances,
the violence of faction carried into military operations, and the
horrors attendant on civil war. I never had a doubt, that, if the
administration of General Taylor had gone to war, and had sent troops
into New Mexico, the Texan forces would have been subdued in a week. The
power on one side was far superior to all the power on the other. But
what then? What if Texan troops, assisted by thousands of volunteers
from the disaffected States, had gone to New Mexico, and had been
defeated and turned back? Would that have settled the boundary question?
Now, Gentlemen, I wish I had ten thousand voices. I wish I could draw
around me the whole people of the United States, and I wish I could make
them all hear what I now declare on my conscience as my solemn belief,
before the Power who sits on high, and who will judge you and me
hereafter, that, if this Texan controversy had not been settled by
Congress in the manner it was, by the so-called adjustment measures,
civil war would have e