cipation, accompanied by colonization, as the
only remedy for the evil of slavery. In my Texas letter, just referred
to, published at its date over my signature, being then a senator from
Mississippi, I expressed the following opinions on this great question:

'Again the question is asked, is slavery never to disappear from the
Union? This is a startling and momentous question, but the answer is
easy and the proof is clear--_it will certainly disappear if Texas is
reannexed to the Union_, not by abolition, but in spite of all its
frenzy, slowly and gradually, by diffusion, as it has thus nearly
receded from several of the more Northern of the slaveholding States,
and as it will certainly continue more rapidly to recede by the
reannexation of Texas, into _Mexico and Central and Southern America_.
Providence * * * thus will open Texas as a safety-valve, into and
through which slavery will slowly and gradually recede, and finally
disappear into the boundless regions of Mexico, and Central and Southern
America. Beyond the Del Norte _slavery will not pass_; not only because
it is forbidden by law, but because the colored races there preponderate
in the ratio of ten to one over the whites, and holding, as they do, the
government and most of the offices in their own possession, they will
never permit the enslavement of any portion of the colored race, which
makes and executes the laws of the country. In Bradford's Atlas the
facts are given as follows:

'Mexico, area 1,690,000 square miles; population eight millions, one
sixth white, and all the rest Indians, Africans, Mulattoes, Zambos, and
other colored races. Central America, area 186,000 square miles;
population nearly two millions, one sixth white, and the rest Negroes,
Zambos, and other colored races. South America, area 6,500,000 square
miles; population fourteen millions, one million white, four millions
Indians, and the remainder, being nine millions, blacks and other
colored races. The outlet for our negro race through this vast region
can never be opened but by the reannexation of Texas; but, in that
event, there, in that extensive country, bordering on our negro
population, and four times greater in area than the whole Union, with a
sparse population of but three to the square mile, where nine tenths of
the people are of the colored races--there, upon that fertile soil, and
in that delicious climate, so admirably adapted to the negro race, as
all experience has now