WRITINGS OF SAl\I HOUSTON, 1853
459
To Guy M. BRYAN 1
Independence, November 1, 1853 Dear Sir I have to thank you for copies of the letters I requested, and I am now prepared to respond to yours of April 1st [21]. I regret much that I should have caused you either trouble or anxiety, in regard to my motive in requesting of you these copies; by this time, I hope that you are satisfied that I only requested copies of letters which for the time had been laid away with so much care, that when wanted they could not be found. I feel the more obliged to you, as you had to overcome fears lest I had formed some cunning device to entrap you, this I infer from your remark in which you say "that although you have long been represented to me as a cunning and insincere man, yet will I trust you." You then proceed to speak of the frankness of your own character as also of its simplicity and sincerity, expressing a hope that I will entertain a corresponding disposition, it does seem to me that this has but little to do with our correspondence, the object of which you have entirely disregarded, or forgotten. You commenced the correspondence, and I presume had made up your mind as to what sort of man I was, and whether or not I was to be trusted. In the outset, you say, that you had learned from your friends, that I had been unfriendly to Genl Austin (your µncle) during his life time, at the same time assuring me that my neighbors and friends had informed you to the contrary, and that you had a high respect for them, you wished a reply from me, not so much to satisfy yourself, as others to the position in which you stood as a presidential elector of Texas. This was a matter in which I had no agency, and which for the present I will pass by. When I replied to your letter it was done in all frankness, and long after the nomination for the presidency, when I could have had no other than a sincere dis- position to gratify you as a relative of Genl Austin, for whose worth I had long cherished a sincere regard. This on all proper occasions I had freely and publically expressed. For this reason alone I was induced to give you a detail of such facts and in- cidences as I believed would satisfy you of the friendly relations in which General Austin and myself had continued until the close of his life, this was to you a courtesy, but above all, it was a due to the truth of history.
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