WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1853
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are, from the nature of their service, useless as "field officers," above the rank of captain, and of so distributing and employing the said Marine Corps as to render them effective for the pur- poses to which they are suited and for which they were designed. 1 Cong1·essionctl Globe, Part I, 2d Sess., 32d Cong., 1852-1853, pp. 498-499. SPEECH ON THE BILL PROVIDING FOR THE TEXAS DEBT, FEBRUARY 11, 1853 1 [On the bill to provide for the payment of such creditors of the late Republic of Texas as are comprehended in the act of Congress of September 9, 1850, Mr. Houston said:] I am very reluctant to occupy a moment of the precious time of the Senate, and particularly when other matters which are, in the estimation of honorable gentlemen, of so much urgency are pressed upon the attention of the body. But the bill before the Senate seems to implicate the character of the State of which I am in part the representative on this floor, and demands of her Senators at least an explanation. If they are incapable of vindicating her reputation, if she cannot be justified in the course which she has adopted, no excuse will be rendered for it; and, to determine upon the merits of her claims to consideration, and to the due regard of her sister States, it is proper that we should advert to the circumstances under which those debts orig- inated, and under which they are held by the present claimants. Texas, when she rose from her revoluntionary struggle, did not owe much more than $2,000,000; and more concurred in the opinion that she owed but a million and a half than that her debt exceeded two millions. This constituted the amount of her entire liabilities at that time, and up to the year 1838. From the period of the commencement of her separate Government, in the fall of 1836, down to the winter of 1838, her entire debt did not exceed $2,500,000, embracing all her liabilities; and her entire currency in circulation was less thai1 half a million. It was from 1838 up to the end of 1841, that the debt accumulated from two and a half millions to the enormous sum of twelve millions of dollars. This was not, as gentlemen seem to understand it in most instances, a debt created by the sale of bonds, pledging the faith of Texas for their redemption; for a little more than one million of bonds are all that are outstanding against Texas. The other debts have resulted from her currency. The impres- sion has gone abroad that Texas was placed on a footing with
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