1845 PETITION OF JOHN S. HANNA, REMONSTRATING Against the annexation of Texas

Description: [ebay 249] 28th CONGRESS, 2d Session. [SENATE.] 1713 [142 PETITION OF JOIIN S. HANNA, REMONSTRATING Against the annexation of Texas. FEBRUARY 27, 1845. Ordered to be printed. To the honorable the Senate of the United States: The petition of the undersigned respectfully showeth: That your petitioner is uncompromisingly opposed to the annexation of Texas to the Union of his Republic, under any circumstances whatever. That your petitioner prays your honorable body to pause; to remember that there is an almighty strong God, who is an Invisible Ruler, and who bears rule over the Government of his country by eternal right, and whose stately steppings of glorious majesty, mercy, justice, and glory, as a Reign- ing Sovereign Prince and God Invisible, are altogether visible to the truly observant within his country. That your petitioner prays Senators to pause, and to pause quickly, and then to retrace their steps. That your petitioner beheld an almighty burst on the 26th, 27th, or 28th February, in his darkened chamber, and as far back as 1831, when he, your petitioner, was languishing on a bed of sore suffering a burst which was and is the precursor of the finale of a something, the consummation of which is sought within his country, to its eternal shame and its eternal dis. grace and dishonor, and to the eternal destruction of its liberties, both sacred and imperishable, as a glorious republic of liberty, freedom, sover- eignty, untrammelled independence, and glory-a something, the consum- mation of which is sought within his country, to the eternal shame, disgrace, and disglorification of the Supreme Invisible Prince and God Divine, who is Chief Corner and Foundation Stone and Divine Head of his country's Government. Senators professed to "want light," and an almighty God has offered it, but it is rejected. A more fearful light may be offered to them, and may burst upon them a light which they can have no election in, with regard to its rejection. Your petitioner is a man (humble, obscure, unknown, and unheard) who comes seeking a respectful hearing (by peti- tion) at your hand, for his country's safety, peace, honor, independence, and glory, and comes by petition, with no other recommendation than his ☐ inestimable rights as a freeman, as a citizen; with no other recommenda- tion than his rights, and that strength and glory of the accomplishment of the divine will and purposes of the Lord God of Hosts, and not as a re-142] 2 ligionist, in the profession of the holy religion of the Son of God, in being attached to any sect, party, or persuasion, in the pale of a professed or possessed Christianity, but sails under his own chosen and true colors, with the inspirational voice of the Lord God on his ensign and flag waving upon his mast's head; and Senators are not authorized by high Heaven to ask any additional recommendation at his hands. Your petitioner is a man in poverty, made poor by self-sacrificing labors all his life for his country's peace, safety, and glory, and for his country's common God and Prince, exalted, glorified, and divine; and, sirs, your petitioner glories in his poverty, when the goal of an unspeakable and inconceivably bright hope for his country is set before him as the heavenly illustrious day-star, unwaning and glorious in its heaven-hallowed brightness, is beheld by him in the distance. That your petitioner has forwarded a request and a petition to the Sen- ate of the United States, but that in both, as a citizen born in his country, he is treated with far less courtesy, kindness, and respect, than is mani- fested (upon the part of Senators) to any foreigner (your petitioner claims not the self-created appellation of "Native American,” or “ Native Ameri- can" principles) for a hearing in the Senate of the United States; and your petitioner views it as not only unjust and ungrateful, but highly tyrannical, oppressive, and cruel; and it (the barring of your petitioner the exercise of a freeman's right) shall be punished as a transgression of a high grade, upon the part of high and responsible functionaries of his nation's Government, at the hands of the Lord God of Hosts, by whose authority, in accordance with his right as a freeman, he is deputed-de- puted by him, and by him alone, to make known his most holy will with regard to and his utter detestation and abhorrence of "Texas annexation," as a scheme of hell, engendered in superhuman malignity, and persevered in by that hell, with perfect hate of the liberties and most glorious glories of his Republic a scheme having for its object the destruction of the union of that Republic, in severing the blood-cemented ties of a glorious confederation of the sovereign States of that Union. If Senators are actu- ally in sport as regards annexation matters, with regard to the bill now before the Senate, he would be as well satisfied to be heard upon an unani- mous vote being taken to "reconsider" as he would be previous to its pas- sage; but your petitioner has every reason to believe that there is too much earnestness upon the subject for truth to be heard even edgeways; and the great God of all glory has said, "Neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." Your petitioner, knowing well that his country's liberties are in the most imminent danger, and are most unjustly, unrighteously, unpatriotically, and fearfully jeoparded by this wild and heaven-unauthorized measure at the hands of the Chief Magistrate of this nation, refuses to have his mouth closed and his rights as a free-born citi- zen set at nought, through the unkindness, injustice, and ingratitude, of any Senator or Senators, to whom he has made application; nor shall his Excel- lency John Tyler, Chief Magistrate of a free and enlightened (though now in the dark, and wofully) people, close his mouth, or bar him his rights, ines- timable, precious, and glorious, as a citizen of his country, without being cited to appear at that eternal court of divine equity in the heavens, to which he, standing as his own attorney, and the attorney of the glorified invisible Prince of his nation, has cited others, who thought that their mountains of strength stood as firm and as strong as think Senators who now refuse to grant to him his rights, as an unbribed, unbought, free, and untrammelled citizen of his glorious republic, to that divine court, from whose decision there is no appeal. That your petitioner prays your honorable body to grant leave to him (to be equal at least to a foreigner) to be heard on the floor of the United States Senate in defence of the sacred and imperishable liberties of his country, and the eternal divine rights, liberties, and glories, of the supreme invisible divine head of his nation's Government, and by whom alone that Government has been most gloriously protected and preserved. That your petitioner, with the knowledge which he possesses, were he a member of the United States Senate, and in earnest as to the annexation of Texas to the Union of his country, would look upon his occupying an aw- fully fearful situation, should the bill pass in favor of annexation. Your petitioner now states, that should news reach him of the Capitol of his country being prostrated to the earth, a shapeless mass of ruins, burying all within it in its awful vortex of death and destruction, by the eternally strong and well-nerved arm of matchless strength of the Lord God of the heavens and the earth, your petitioner could not be found to express any astonishment thereat. Your petitioner disclaims coming before you thus in possession of prophetic prediction upon his own part, and does not therefore predict, (further than to state, upon his own authority, who spake as never man spake, that there will that follow your disobedience to the supreme will of Heaven that will be marked in your annexation of Texas to my country, by that which will be seen, known, and felt, through- out eternal ages to come, in the eternity of the future;) nor is his language to be distorted, garbled, or construed, by friend or foe, so as to make him a parallel to the Millers, Smiths, and Matthias's, of the present age. Your petitioner has another province granted to him, and one eternally more grand and glorious than the province they and all others like unto them are permitted to figure in within his country. That your petitioner prays your honorable body that he may be heard by statement and by petition on the floor of the Senate, for the above- named purpose, and in opposition to the unrighteous, God-forbidden, and despised measure of annexing Texas to the Union of his country. The assent of the Senate of the United States can reaclı your petitioner in an official announcement to him (through the voluntary kindness of some magnanimous member who may not have forgotten to be grateful) at the city of Baltimore, the place of his present residence. That, as your petitioner's petition has been disregarded by that member whose constituent your petitioner is, in common with his fellow-citizens of Maryland, and that, too, to his own hurt and dishonor, your petitioner has no other avenue by which to come before you than to address his petition to the United States Senate as a body; for he, as a constituent, has now no official organ in that Senate (save it be Mr. Pearce, Senator from Mary- land, if now in his place, and to whom a petition of like tenor is also here- with transmitted) to represent him therein as a freeman, a citizen of a as yet free Republic. And for the above, as petitioned for, your petitioner shall in duty con- tinue to pray. Respectfully, MCCOLLUM'S HOTEL, BALTIMORE, JOHN SMITH HANNA. Corner of Eutaw and Franklin streets, February 26, 1845.

Price: 49.99 USD

Location: Schwenksville, Pennsylvania

End Time: 2024-08-13T15:52:45.000Z

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