[2503] [CHAMBERS to -----]
[March, 1836] Commandancy General; Army of Reserve for the protection of the Liberties of Texas.
Sir,
Being informed that you feel a lively interest for the welfare of Texas, and that you are disposed to aid her in the noble resistance which she is making against the desperate attempt of a tyrant to enslave her; and having been commissioned by our Government to organize and take command of an Army of Reserve for the protection of her liberties, I have thought proper to address you upon the subject in the expectation that your known love of liberty and chivalrous spirit will lead you to engage actively in her cause. And surely there could not be a cause more just, more legitimate, or more glorious, or one that would offer a more brilliant field for the exercise of your magnanimity, your enterprise, your philanthrophy, your valor, or your love of glory. · The Texians, called and invited by the Mexican Government, abandoned their homes, their friends and relatives, left their native land where they were enjoying all the blessings of a free government, established themselves in the wilderness of Texas, and unaided by the government, won it from the savage Indians by their valor, and made it smile with their fields and gardens by their toil and industry; and if that protection for their property, their persons and their liberties which was promised to them by the nation and guaranteed in the constitution had been secured lo them by a wise, just and energetic administration of the government, they would have been prosperous, contented and happy. But alas! a constitutional, federal and republican government, has never existed in Mexico but in name. Although the decay, the weakness and internal dissentions of Spain enabled the Mexicans to burst the chains in which she had held them in abslute despotism for three centuries, she has entailed upon them an inherited intellectual slavery, from which nothing but the regenerating hand of time can redeem and disenthrall them. The nation since its separation from Spain, has been perpetually agited by a ceaseless succession of revolutions, distracted by the fury of
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