WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1855
156
1853; Southwestern American, April 13, 1853; A Mem01·ial and Genealogical Record of Southwest Texa.s (Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago), p. 498. SJohn Wilkins Whitfield was born in Tennessee, but as a young man moved to Independence, Missouri. In 1853 he was appointed Indian agent to the Pottawatomies at Westport, Missouri, and from 1855 to 1856 he served as agent to the Arkansas Indians. When Kansas was given representation as a Territory, he was elected to represent that Territory in the Thirty-third Congress, and served from December 20, 1854, to March 5, 1855, and in the Thirty-fourth Congress from March 4, 1855, to August 1, 1856, at which time the seat was declared vacant. Whitfield then went to New Orleans, Louisiana, and was immediately elected Representative from Louisiana to the Thirty-fourth Congress to fill a vacancy. He served in that position from December 9, 1856, to March 3, 1857. He was then made Register of the Land Office at Doniphan, Kansas, and served in that office from 1857 to 1861. His first taste of military life began with a position as Captain of the Twenty- seventh Texas Regiment of Cavalry in 1861. He was raised to the rank of Major in 1862, and that same year participated in the battles of Pea Ridge and Iuka, and was cited by General Price for "dashing boldness and steady courage"; he was promoted to the rank of Colonel, and engaged in a cavalry battle near Spring Hill in 1863, and there he was .again cited for "skill and valor," and was made a Brigadier General. At the close of the Civil War in 1865, he went to Texas, settled in Lavaca County, and engaged in farming. He died near Hallettsville, Lavaca County, October 27, 1879, and was b"uried in the Ha]]ettsville Cemetery. See Biographical Directory of the American Congress (1928), 1694. 9 See notes on Robert S. Neighbors, Volume V, p. 165. 10 See John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, 78-82; J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredati011s in Texas, 25-27; John J. Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas, 338-344, for detailed accounts of the sacking of Linnville in 1840. 11 Crane, Life and Select Literm-y Remains of Sam Houston, C. Edwards Lester, Autlumtic Memoirs, 320-323, print the remainder of this speech as a separate document, and date it December 31, 1854. 1 zJohn B. McMaster, The People of the United States, VI, 332, gives a good brief account of this "delicate outrage." 13/bid.
FEBRUARY-MAY, 1855 To DR. J. W. STONE 1
Washington, 7th Feby 1855 My dear Sir. You will see from the enclosed slip that you were right. I have imparted to Mr. Banks duly any thing that [I] thought on the subject. I only intend to deliver the Lecture indicated in my letter to you, or if otherwise I have no recollection of any promise to any one, but as stated.
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