of a “considerable and respectable portion of the confederacy” against whose wishes Texas should not be annexed, he had meant the abolitionists. “As to the idea of my courting the abolitionists,” he said, “it is perfectly absurd. No man in the United States has been half as much abused by them as I have been.” “Personally,” he added, “I could have no objection to the annexation of Texas; but I certainly should be unwilling to see the existing Union dissolved or seriously jeoparded for the sake of acquiring Texas. If any one desires to know the leading and paramount object of my public life, the preservation of the Union will furnish him the key.”
This might have passed without much harm, but his Southern friends demanded more, and he gave more. “I do not think it right,” he wrote to Miller on July 27, “to announce in advance what will be the course of a future administration in respect to a question with a foreign power. I have, however, no hesitation in saying that, far from having any personal objection to the annexation of Texas, I should be glad to see it, without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and fair terms. I do not think that the subject of slavery ought to affect the question, one way or the other. Whether Texas be independent, or incorporated in the United States, I do not think it will shorten or prolong the duration of that institution. It is destined to become extinct at some distant day, in my
