WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1853
410
outstanding controversy: the western boundary, and the payment of the debt of the Republic of Texas. Immediately various creditors of Texas-- especially those speculators who had bought Texas securities for from sixteen to twenty-five cents on the dollar-swarmed to Washington, hoping to have their claims honored at face value by the Congress. So on March 21, 1848, the Texas legislature passed a law (see Ga.nimel Laws of Texas, III, 208-209) providing for the ascertainment of the amount of the public debt of the Republic of Texas, and authorizing the Auditor and the Comptroller "to classify all claims, reducing the same to actual par value which may have been realized by the Republic, and to report what was their opinion con- cerning the best means to preserve the rights of the state, and at the same time do equity to the holders-of the claims." These men were also authorized to recommend rate of payment of the claims according to the classification that they had made of the debts. In 1850, the compromise bill of that year provided that Texas should be paid $10,000,000 in order to induce her to give up all claims to the disputed territory on her western and north boundaries, and to p~v the debts for which the revenues of the Republic had been pledged. Not until February 7, 1853, was the scaling provision of the 1848 act extended and put into effect (see Gammel, III, 1338). Texas had ascertained that the debts for which her revenue had been pledged amounted to $2,300,000, and that the entire debt was $8;330,000. In order to make the federal govern- ment secure against the claims on Texas, five million dollars of the ten million had been reserved in the United ·States treasury, until Texas should pay her debts. So by the state act of February, 1853, this debt was scaled in such a way as to insure that the $5,000,000 reserved in the United States treasury would cover all the debts against the. former Republic. The debts were scaled according to their classification; naturally the scaling was irregular. Some creditors were to receive as much as 90 or 87 per cent of the face value, while others could collect only 25 per cent. It was this irregular scaling that caused so much wrangling and such angry debate when the Texas debt item of the appropriation bill came up for discussion. Some of the senators claimed that the Texas method of scaling was not right; that all creditors should be paid face value of! the debt, or have it scaled at the same rate, because they argued that the United States might be held morally, if not legally responsible for the entire debt. And a considerable number proposed and argued that the ·united States should pay the entire $8,330,000. James M. Mason of Virginia proposed that Texas be paid the $5,000,000 that had been reserved out of the $10,000,000, together with what interest had accrued thereon, and be left to scale and pay her debt as she saw fit. This brought on a still more involved and heated debate, a debate in which Houston made the remarks recounted above. 2 General Leslie Combs. See Volume II, 505. The Kentucky senators were exceedingly zealous in their efforts to collect face value on General Combs' claims against Texas. He was one of the creditors who had put his claims in against Texas before the federal government in 1846, or 1846. He did have a son who joined the Santa Fe expedition, and who was killed in an altercation in Louisiana. His death had nothing whatever to do with his service in Texas, but the Kentucky senators made much of the Texas connection in their arguments in behalf of General Combs' claims against
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