WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1856
387
liberty, and so declared by our Constitution. We are acting in harmony with that sacred instrument. If I saw the Hindoo, the idolater, the Pagan, in his devotions, I would not disturb him. That is a matter exclusively his own. But when I see that an institution is sought to be fixed upon this country by every insidious and operative art which is calculated to put down Protestantism and establish Papery, and when their very com- munion obligation is to exterminate and discountenance and persecute all Protestants, I think with reverence to the opinions of our ancestry, we are bound to place ourselves on the defensive. I have particular 1·easons to feel this. I am not going to narrate unimportant history in Texas, but I desire to allude to an impor- tant historical event which occurred there. At the fall of the Alamo one hundred and eighty gallant men lost their lives. Leonidas and his Spartans never fell more gloriously in battling for Grecian liberty than these men who perished for Texas. How were they treated? After every man was butchered-not one left to tell the tale-layers of wood were put down, and. then layers of human bodies, alternatively, until a pile was made. Then the faggot was applied, and they were consumed to ashes under the malediction of a priest. They were not only persecuted in life, but were execrated in death. Say you not that this is a fearful commentary upon that religion, and if I am not to defend myself and children against it? I am an American. I will ever be one. I will resist the despot's front, or the insidious wiles of J esuitism. These ,are reasons enough for me; but I ask the intelligent Senate to point to one spot on earth, where Catholic power or influence prevails, in which trial by jury, the right of habeas corpus, or the Magna Charta exists? I am in favor of a free religion, and an open Bible. The war is between an open Bible and free religion on the one side, and a closed Bible and despotism on the other. You have the issue to meet. Are we not negotiating with foreign countries to obtain for American citizens who die there the right of Christian burial? Do the American party wish to exclude any one here, of the Catholic denomination from participancy in our common lot-the narrow house of death? No. The Catholic may be laid without objection, by the side of our brother, or our sister, and he mar be shrived, if he pleases, by the priest, in their manner of conse- cration ; but an American Protestant citizen, if he dies in a foreign country, is cast upon the potter's field, and excluded from Christian burial; and then you tell me that we are proscriptive! Oh, shame, upon political artifice!
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