WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1855
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to office who were foreign born, Mr. Soule, Mr. Belmont, and [Mr. Robert Dale Owen 2 ] to Naples. He was very severe upon these gentlemen, and called them some very hard, abusive names, enter- taining the audience with their personal and private histories and affairs,-and told them that Mr. Belmont was a "money stealer," and made some remarks not very complimentary to a certain class of women in our large cities for whom he got into a per- sonal difficulty w.ith Bill Poole,3 or somebody else-we did not hear the name distinctly. Naples, he said was a · very refined and corrupt court, and no better than it should be. He said that it was on account of these three appointments and the passage of the Nebraska-Kansas Bill that the Know-Nothing, or American party had been formed, and the great heart of America excited,- that said bill was concocted by a little caucus of seven or eight senators in Congress, and that Mr. Pierce had fallen into their measures, and so the bill was brought forward and passed-that it was a very bad bill, and that he alone of the Southern Senators had vote against it-(He did not seem to know that Mr. Bell had voted the same way.) He told senators, he said, that it was a bad bill, and that the North would not like it; and referred to his speech on the subject in the Senate in proof of what he asserted and to the Know-Nothing victories at the North in proof of its truth, and the fulfillment of all his prophecies. He said that he was a Democrat of the George Washington school, and told the audience that he [Washington] was the father of his country and was opposed to foreigners.-that he had warned and entreated the said country to beware of foreigners, and their wiles,-that General Washington had said that Lafayette was the only foreigner he liked and that he wished that no other had ever come to this country, for no other had brought men or means. General Houston then said that Hamilton, Montgomery, Pulaski, Steuben, De Kalb, Kosciusko, and all the rest were mere adven- turers, or paupers that had been thrown off the surface of a crowded European population, and that his country owed them nothing, absolutely nothing, for they brought nothing to aid our country with, and were amply remunerated for their personal services, by the pay they received from our government!!! He said our foreign population was a very bad one, that General Jackson was opposed to foreigners, that our jails and poor houses were filled and overflowing with them,-that in our large cities they controlled matters, and that our large cities completely con- trolled the rest of the country-that foreign governments were all opposed to us and were sending their convicts and paupers over
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