WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1855
224
consummate folly to charge me with abandoning the rights of my country, or forgetting my duty to my constituents! I have seen circulating in the newspapers a letter from Henry A. Wise. Yes, Henry A. Wise. I had not intended to enlarge his notoriety, but I will give him a passing notice. Henry A. Wise! Who is he? He has long been notorious as a slanderer, reviler, and tra- ducer of General Jackson. He is the man who said that there was concentrated in one single act of General Jackson's adminis- tration more corruption than in all the administrations that had preceded his. Now, Virginia has honored him with her confi- dence! Yes, the newspapers say that he is the governor of Vir- ginia. To be sure he obtained distinction while he was minister to Brazil. He made himself notorious while there, by getting into a fuss about some women and children with a scrub emperor, who had been run off from Europe and had found a throne on the banks of the Amazon. That's Henry A. Wise. He was not recalled by Mr. Polk whom he had slandered and traduced as well as General Jackson, from the fact that Mr. Polk could not descend to retaliate for the abuse which had been lavished upon him. In his reply to a Boston committee he has called my name, intending, no doubt, to identify me with abolitionism by insinua~ ing that I had co-operated with them. I must say a word about it. Soon after I went to Boston and was the first man to vin- dicate the institution of slavery in that city, the "Charleston Mercury," a rabid disunion paper, came out in decided terms and said that it was just right-that it was just right-that I was defending the rights of the South. But in the next issue of that paper, it reversed itself, and said that my speech was all wrong, , that I was pandering to the favor of the North and seeking North- ern votes. Well, Mr. Wise says, in his answer to the letter of invitation from the Boston committee, that General Houston would be the last man he would follow, and that he has no doubt that the abolitionists of Boston are very much obliged to General Houston for the aid and comfort he has given them. This low fling of his would not elevate the character of a third-rate dema- gogue. But he is a man who has been accustomed to minister to other people's quarrels, whilst he has had wonderful tact in preserving his own person from harm. Mr. Henry A. Wise is no doubt well aware of the great aversion I have to juveniles of the canine specie barking at my heels, and he might apprehend, too, that a nearer approach might subject him to some inconven- iences. But the question of slavery to which his attention has
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