annexation of Texas extremely; and this being so, why they should refuse
to cast their votes [so] as to prevent it, even to me seemed wonderful.
What was their process of reasoning, I can only judge from what a single
one of them told me. It was this: "We are not to do evil that good may
come." This general proposition is doubtless correct; but did it apply?
If by your votes you could have prevented the extension, etc., of slavery
would it not have been good, and not evil, so to have used your votes,
even though it involved the casting of them for a slaveholder? By the
fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree cannot bring forth good
fruit. If the fruit of electing Mr. Clay would have been to prevent the
extension of slavery, could the act of electing have been evil?

But I will not argue further. I perhaps ought to say that individually I
never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much
good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free
republican people on our own model. On the other hand, I never could very
clearly see how the annexation would augment the evil of slavery. It
always seemed to me that slaves would be taken there in about equal
numbers, with or without annexation. And if more were taken because of
annexation, still there would be just so many the fewer left where they
were taken from. It is possibly true, to some extent, that, with
annexation, some slaves may be sent to Texas and continued in slavery
that otherwise might have been liberated. To whatever extent this may be
true, I think annexation an evil. I hold it to be a paramount duty of us
in the free States, due to the Union of the States, and perhaps to
liberty itself (paradox though it may seem), to let the slavery of the
other States alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally
clear that we should never knowingly lend ourselves, directly or
indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--to find
new places for it to live in when it can no longer exist in the old. Of