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THE AUSTIN PAPERS
country-I wish I did my heart bleeds for the late calamity brought upon your suffering and patriotic Country It is my opinion that it would be useless at this time to get our Govern- ment to go into the contest as a nation When you return you can find out how far it would be prudent to ask RH M JOHNSON [Addressed:] Genl. S. F. Austin New York, City New York
AUSTIN TO ANDREW JACKSON
To ANDREW JACKSON, MARTIN VAN BUREN, RICHARD M. JOHNSON, JoHN FORSYTH, LEWIS CASS, T. H. BENTON, AND TO ANY MEMBER OF THE CABINET OR CONGRESS OF ALL PARTIES AND ALL FACTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. New York April 15 th • 1836. Pardon me this intrusion upon your valued time. I address you as Indi- widuals, as men, as Americans, as my countrymen. I obey an honest though an excited impulse. We have recent dates from Mexico by the Packet. It Appears that Santana has succeeded in uniting the whole of the Mexicans against Texas by making it a national war against heretics: that an additional army of 8000 men is organizing in Mexico under Gen. Cortazar to march to Texas . and exterminate the heretic Americans. Santana is now in Texas, as we all know, with about 7000 men fighting under the bloody flag of a Pirate- he is exciting the Comanches and other Indians, who know nothing of laws or political divisions of territory, and massacres have been committed on Red River within the U.S. This is a war of barbarism against civilization, of despotism against liberty, of Mexicans against Americans. Oh my coun- trymen! the warm hearted chivalrous impulsive West and South are up· and moving in favor of Texas. The calculating and more prudent tho' not less noble minded North are aroused. The Sympathies of the whole Amer- ican people in mass are with the Texians. This people look to you the guardians of their rights and interests and principles. Will you, can you turn a deaf ear to the appeals of your fellow citizens in favor of your and their countrymen and friends who are massacred, butchered, outraged in Texas at your very doors? Are not we, the Texians oheying the dictates of an education received here: from you the American people, from our fathers, from the patriots of 76--the Republicans of 1836? Have we not been stimulated to obey the dictates of this noble education by the expres- sion of opinions all over the United States and by all parties that we ought to resist and throw off the yoke of Mexican usurpation, and are we now 'to be abandoned or suffered to struggle .alone and single handed, because the cold calculations of policy or of party have had to be consulted?
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