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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1827
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exhausted; a capitulation was proposed and acceded to; but no sooner were their arms laid down, than the carnage recom- menced. They grasped their arms; resistance was unavailing. They were overborne by numbers, and either fell like men, or were reserved as victims for the refinement of savage cruelty. Sir, the wounded were collected and thrown into a building, con- sumed with fire, amidst the shouts and yells of savage allies in British pay. Kentucky felt the wound: she will long deplore the loss. I ask, Sir, if Patriots could exult in a catastrophe like this, or taunt the Administration in a calamity so appalling to humanity. But how stand matters now? Do we not behold the Representa- tives of the friends and relatives of the brave victims who fell at Raisin now walking in humble submission after the great Opposition Chieftain of that day, who was then arrayed against the country, and foremost in denouncing the measures of that Administration as corrupt? And shall this claim no notice, at our hands? It does claim a notice; and from me, at least, it shall always have it. How gentlemen will reconcile these matters, is for them, and not for me, to determine. The gentleman from Ohio, (Mr. Wright) was pleased to con- strue an expression of mine, which I used when I had the honor last to address the House, as intended to be applied to some mem- ber of the Cabinet. That application was wholly gratuitous. The reference which I made to Catiline was not for the purpose of proving that all the friends of the present Executive were either pure or otherwise, but merely by way of illustration, to shew that a man may have friends, or those who call themselves so, be his character what it may. But the gentleman has attempted to run a parallel between Catiline and a distinguished individual, not a member of the Cabinet. Of that I will take notice in the progress of my argument. The gentleman remarks that, with the elevation of Jefferson, his opponents fell to rise no more. If that be true, present cir- cumstances are most extraordinary. Surely some of his most in- veterate enemies have risen. The present Executive is among the number. Let us see by what means he has risen. When Jefferson was placed upon the watch-tower; when the country sustained him; when those opposed to his policy could not rise; did not the present Chief Magistrate, like a second Sinon, who repaired from the Grecian to the Trojan camp, with hands bound, with an abject look, and tears of humiliation, as if he bowed to the
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