soldiers under your command, to obey your orders rigidly, and to be diligent and scrupulous in the discharge of their several duties. Done in the town of San F~lipe ?e Austin, this ninth day of January, eighteen hundred and thirty-six. Henry Smith, Governor Charles B. Stewart, Secretary of Executive. (1743) [SMITH to COUNCIL] Executive Department of Texas. To the Honorable the President and members of the General Council. Gentlemen:- I herewith transmit to your body, the returns and corres- pondence of Colonel Neill, Lieutenant Colonel Commandant of the post at Bexar. You will in that correspondence find the situation of that Garrison. You will find there a detail of facts, calculated to call forth the indignant feelings of every honest man. Can y·our body say that they have not been cognizant of and connived at this predatory expedition? Are you not daiJy holding conference and planning co-operation both by sea and land? Acts speak louder than words, they are now before me, authorizing a Generalissimo with plenary powers, to plan expeditions on the faith, the credit, and I may justly say, to the ruin of the country. You urge me by resolutions to make appointments, fit out vessels, as government vessels, registering them as such, appointing landsmen to command a naval expedition by making representations urgent in their nature, and for what? I see no reason but to carry into effect by the hurried and improvident acts of my department, the views of your favorite object by getting my sanction to an act discouraging in its nature, and ruinous in its effects. Instead of acting as becomes the counsellors and guardians of a free people; you resolve yourselves into low, intriguing, caucussing parties, pass resolutions without a quorum, predicated on.false. ~remises, and. endeavor ~o ruin ~he country, by countenancmg, aidmg and abettmg maraudmg parties, and if you could only deceive me enough,_ you woul? join with it a piratical co-operation. You have acted m .ha~ . f~1th, an? seem determined by your acts to destroy the very mst1tut10ns wluch you l dged and sworn to support. I have been placed on the are p e h . I f "b•1· d olitical watch tower, I feel t e we1~ 1t o respons1 1 1ty evolving P d confidently hope I W1ll be able to prove a faithful upon me, an
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