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1 Then a Whig member of Congress; since, Governor of New York.
2 Mr. James Brooks, Editor of The New York Express, reported to the New York Whig State Convention of 1847 (October 6th), an Address condemning the objects of the Mexican War then raging, which was unanimously adopted. In the course of it, he said:
Fellow Citizens: Disguise the Mexican War as sophistry may, the great truth cannot be put down, nor lied down, that it exists because of the Annexation of Texas; that from such a cause we predicted such a consequence would follow; and that, but for that cause, no war would have existed at all. Disguise its intents, purposes and consequences, as sophistry may struggle to do, the further great truth cannot be hidden, that its main object is the conquest of a market for slaves, and that the flag our victorious legions rally around, fight under, and fall for, is to be desecrated from its holy character of Liberty and Emancipation into an errand of Bondage and Slavery. * * * We protest, too, in the name of the rights of Man and of Liberty, against the further extension of Slavery in North America. The curse which our mother country inflicted upon us, in spite of our fathers' remonstrances, we demand shall never blight the virgin soil of the North Pacific. * * * * We will not pour out the blood of our countrymen, if we can help it, to turn a Free into a Slave soil; we will not spend from fifty to a hundred millions of dollars per year to make a Slave market for any portion of our countrymen. * * * The Union as it is, the whole Union, and nothing but the Union, we will stand by to the last — but No More Territory is our watchword — unless it be Free.
3 The last Convention of the Cass Democrats, or “Hunkers,” which was held at Syracuse in September, 1849, proposing a conciliatory course toward the “Barnburners,” as an overture towards a neutral basis of runion with them, adopted the following:
“Resolved, That we are opposed to the extension of Slavery to the free territories of the United States; but we do not regard the Slavery question, in any form of its agitation, or any opinion in relation thereto, as a test of political faith, or as a rule of party action.”
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