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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1853
462
but one thing-as I felt fully fortified against any charge of unkindness or want of respect for your uncle-and that was in reference to your being an applicant for the office of [name left blank in the original] which office you did not obtain. You might have thought that I had pretermitted your claims, therefore supposed that I was unfriendly to the memory of your uncle, in not obtaining for you the appointment. Why you were not appointed I never explained to you; it certainly arose from no prejudice on my part, or dislike for any of your relatives, for the individual who obtained it had acted with my enemies, and whatever weight he possessed had been thrown into the scale against me and the country, as I conceived it, in the crisis of 1842. I have never been charged at any time to conciliate my enemies by placing them in power or position. The observation referred to above calls into question the sin- cerity of the pledges given by you to the convention at the time you were nominated as an elector. If I am correctly informed, you have disclosed since that time, that when you gave those pledges, I was not really your choice for the high office in ques- tion, arising from your wa-nt of confi,clence in me, but that you would have supported me if I had been nominated by the Balti- more convention, yet that I could not command yowr confidence and esteem. Now, if such statements were made by you, I will ask you whether or not I ought not to feel somewhat of distrust in your frankness and sincerity? And if such sentiments had been declared by you to the convention or to any friend of mine, do you believe that you would ever have been nominated for the responsible office of elector? In your correspondence with me from the first to the last you refer to friends, not only in your representation of facts, but in your remarks touching their opinions and inferences in regard to the correspondence. Now, I have this to say, that your first letter was written and based upon the statement of friends presenting unkind charges against me. I have averred those charges to be false and unfounded. I have called upon you for the facts charged, as also the names of the authors; you have evaded my demand, and alleged excuses which should have pre- vented you from commencing the correspondence in reference to the charges, unless you intended to give me the opportunity of meeting my accusers face to face; the truth of history induced you to call on me for facts; I gave them to you, and you wished to furnish a new version to some of them. I feel an interest in
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