"There has long been a supposed conflict between the interests of free labor and of slave labor… But let us admit Texas, and we shall place the balance of power in the hand of the Texans themselves… Are our friends of the North prepared to deliver over this great national policy to the people of Texas… in order to purchase a slave market for their neighbors, who, in the words of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, ‘bred men for the market like oxen for the shambles’?"