[4095) [GAINES to CANNON]
Head Quarter West Dept. Camp Sabine Aug 28 1836
Sir,
I had the honor to receive by the last mail your Excellency's letter of the 8th. of this month, advising me of the Suspension by the President of the United Stales of the movement of the Regiment of Mounted Gun-men which you did me the favor a few clays previously to notify me were about to assemble at Jackson preparatory to their march to this frontier. I deeply regret the trouble and disappointment to the brave and patriotic Volunteers and more especially the embarrassment to yourself individually, which my requisition has occasioned. However much I may have erred in the hope and opinion which I entertained and expressed in my letters of the 28th of April and 10th of May last that the frontier was no longer in danger of being attacked, or again menaced by a formidable Savage foe, I have the Satisfaction to find that no great evil or injury to the Service has as yet resulted from the errors an error into which the wisest and best of our Statesmen appear to have fallen-and from the same causes which had operated upon my mind and misled me:- namely, the apparent prospect of a speedy termination of the War between the Mexicans and Texians- I cannot however admit that I have erred in requesting of your Excellency the Regiment of mounted Gun men in question. I have during the last and present month been strongly impressed with the belief that the whole of this frontier would be involved in an Indian War as soon as the threatened hostilities between our blood-thirsty neighbours of the West should be severrecl. When I learned from the Secretary of War that the President of the United States approved my views reported to him in March and April last to assemble upon this frontier an effective force of mounted mere equal to that of either of the Belligerents - a force that would enable me to speak lo both in a language they could not fail to hear and lo heed! And when at the same
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