[3368) [BURNET to SANTA ANNA]
To His Excellency,
The President General, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: Excellent Sir, -Your communication of the 9th instant, purporting to be a protest, to be published to the civilized world, has been presented to me. The Government of Texas cheerfully recognized in your Excellency the right to make known to the world every grievance and injustice that you may have experienced at their hands. I admit that this Government has been constrained, by the influence of a highly excited popular indignation, to deviate for a season from the terms of that article of the Treaty, made between this Government and your Excellency, which relates to your transpor- tation to Vera Cruz. And in making this admission I profess a profound mortification; for it does not belong to the spirit of this Government to make even a slight deviation from its solemn engagements. But the causes that have produced the constraint under which the Government have acted, are not unknown to you, and I should regret to believe that you were incapable of giving to them a just appreciation. The citizens and the citizen soldiers of Texas have felt, and do feel, a deep, inlense, and righteous indignation at the many atrocities which have been perpetrated by the troops lately under your Excellency's command; and especial- ly at the barbarous massacre of the brave Colonel Fannin and his gallant companions. How far your Excellency participated in that abominable and inglorious slaughter, 1 am not disposed lo conjecture, but it is both nahtral and true that the people of Texas impute it to your Excellency's special command. When the Government of Texas solemnized the Treaty of the 14th ultimo, with your Excellency, they did it in good faith, and they intended religiously lo observe every stipulation of that Treaty. Your embarkation on board the armed schooner Invinci- ble, was an effect of that intention, but your Excellency has had loo much experience in the waywardness of popular cxitcmcnls not to feel the necessity which prompted your subsequent debarkation, and the postponement of your stipulated departure. Your Excellency protests, "lstly. For having been treated more like an ordinary criminal than as a prisoner of war, the head
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