without waiting for the action of Texas, withdraw from the Union, and Texas, by the force of circumstances, be compelled at a future period to provide for her own safety, the course of Alabama, South Carolina, and such other States as may follow their lead will but strengthen the conviction already strong among our people that their interest will lead them to avoid entangling alliances, and to enter once again upon a national career. No claim would then exist upon Texas, for her co-operation has not been deemed important at a time when it was essential to her safety, and her statesmen will deem that she violates no duty to the South in imperiling once again her Lone Star banner, and maintaining her position among the independent nations of the earth. If the Union be dissolved and the gloomy foreboding of patriots be realized in the ruin and civil war to follow, Texas can "tread the wine press" alone in the day of her misfortune, even as here freemen trod it in the past; and if she fails in the effort to maintain liberty and her institutions upon her own soil, she will feel that posterity will justify her and lay no blame at her door. Texas, unlike Alabama, has a frontier subject to hostile incursions. Even with the whole power of the United States to defend her, it is impossible to prevent frequent outrages upon her citizens. The numerous tribes of Indians, now controlled by the United States, and restrained by treaty stipulations and the presence of the army, would by the dissolution of the Union be turned loose to provide for themselves, and judging for the past it is not unreasonable to suppose they will direct their savage vengeance against Texas. The bandits of Mexico have within the past year given an evidence of their willingness to make inroads upon us could they do so with impunity. These are some of the consequences of disunion which we of the border cannot shut out from our sight. If Texas has been compelled to resort to her own means of defense when connected with the present Union, it is not to be supposed that she could rely for protection on an alliance with the Gulf States alone, and having grown self-reliant amid adversity and continued so as a member of the Union, it will be but natural that her people, feeling that they must look to themselves, while sympathizing equally with those States whose institutions are similar to their own, will prefer a separate nationality to even an equal position in a confederacy which may be broken and destroyed at any moment by the caprice or dissatisfaction of one of its members. Texas has views of expansion not common to many of her sister States. Although an empire within herself, she feels that there is an empire beyond essential to her security. She will not be content to have the path of her destiny clogged. The same spirit of enterprise which founded a republic here will carry her institutions southward and westward. Having when but a handful of freemen withstood the power of that Nation and wrung from it her independence, she was no fear of Abolition power while in the Union; and should it be the resolve of her people to stand by the Constitution and maintain in the Union those rights guaranteed to them, she will even be proof against the "utter ruin and ignominy" depicted in your communication. A people determined to maintain their rights can neither be ruined nor degraded, and if Texas takes upon herself the holy task of sustaining the Constitution, even in the midst of its enemies, history will accord her equal praise with those who sought only their own safety and left the temple of liberty in their possession.

Were I left to believe that Alabama is disposed to second the efforts made to secure the co-operation of the South in demanding redress