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The fourth clause of your Excellency's Protest has been antecedently answered in part. Your Excellency's recollection has betrayed you into one error when you say,"the President himself, and the Cabinet of Texas, being convinced that 1 had puncl11ally fulfilled all my engagements, &c."Thisgovernment were convinced that your Excellency had complied with some of your stipula- tions, and this conviction aggravates the mortification which the late events have inflicted upon them. But they were not informed that "all the properly had been given up," or that any of the prisoners had been restored, as your Excellency erroneously imagines. On the contrary, we were advised that large heards of cattle had been driven in advance of the retreating army, and that a few only of the soldiers that had been abducted, were returned. It is due to your Excellency to say that the government confidently believed these restorations would be effected as early as a proper convenience would admit. But I am induced tO' advert to another fact, in relation to which it would he difficult to extend the same charitable exculpation to the officers of the Mexican army. It has been reported that the walls of the Alamo, at Bexar, have been prostrated, and that the valuable brass artillery attached to that fortress, have been melted down and destroyed. There were many painful, and pleasing, and glorious reminiscences connected with that Alamo, which render its wanton dilapidation peculiarly odious to every Texas spirit; and your Excellency needs not to be informed that the destruction of it was an infraction of the armistice and a violation of the treaty. In reply to your Excellency's fifth protestation, I remark, that the painful circumstances which induce the government to direct your debarkation on the fourth instant, have already been adverted to in a spirit of frankness and of self-humiliation which a consciousness of error alone could exlort. lt were superfluous to repeat the causes which induced this government to vary its discretion in regard lo the time they should deem the departure of your Excellency to be proper. I am not sensible of any "act of violence and abuse" to which you were exposed, that was not necessarily concomitant with your return to shore. Your Excellen• cy has acquired too great a celebrity in Texas not lo be an object of curiosity with the multitude; but I believe you will bear testimony Lo the magnanimity which restrained a tumull1,1ous and highly exasperated crowd, from offering any indignity lo your
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