. . .and cast a solitary vote to lay them upon the table. Of this act Joshua R. Giddings wrote: "Seeing that eminent Senators around him interposed no objection to the passage of the resolutions, Mr. Porter, obeying the dictates of his own judgment and conscience,[Pg 75] heroically met the overwhelming influence arrayed against him, and showed the most cogent reasons for rejecting the resolutions, by exhibiting the absurdity of the attempt to induce the British government to acknowledge the laws of slavery and the slave trade to exist and be enforced within her ports." Both Mr. Porter and William Woodbridge voted against the resolution for the annexation of Texas. In the House of the Twenty-seventh Congress Jacob M. Howard acted with the friends of freedom on questions involving that issue, and in the Thirtieth Congress William Sprague, the second Whig Representative, was openly classified as a Free Soiler. In 1849 the Whigs and Free Soilers united to support Flavius J. Litt. . . Read More