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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 185 7
return to the quiet walks of private life, carrying back the delight- ful recollection of having honorably and efficiently served their country; and they will receive the warm embraces of family and of friends; and the tear of affection will fall from the soldier's rugged brow. This is the recompense that citizens can have when called from their homes when occasion demands adventure or peril or sacrifice of life in defense of the country. These are men who come pure from the hand of Divinity, stamped with the impress of freemen, and willing to peril everything for love of country, and who are not impelled by a mere desire to shine in their profession. Sir, I want the citizen-soldier to do the mighty deeds of battle-to bear the banner of his country aloft. He is the man upon whom you must rely. There is danger of increasing the Army to gratify the aspira- tions of men who wish for promotion, and who are unwilling to be satisfied with the boons they have received. Promotion is too slow to suit them. While they are in this condition, however, I would recompense them for their time and service liberally; I would give them the means of gentlemanly subsistence. But we are told that outposts are necessary. I deny it. The Senator from California, whose manly, practical, and frank course in the Senate I have admired, says that the Army would be more efficiently employed by keeping them on the march, and not have them cooped up in pickets or in forts. Sir, in these posts they are as inefficient as a heathen god is in an Egyptian temple. They can do no good there. They are utterly inefficient. They may provoke hostilities from an enemy, but they are inef- ficient to the work of chastisement. Have not all our Indian wars of late, upon the Missouri and the Platte, been provoked by the military stations there? The agents have complained, and have said that without the army the Indians would have been fiarmless; but the indiscretion of officers placed _in command, without experience, ambitious to distinguish themselves in the piping times of peace, and make glorious war honorable, is such that they commit outrages and provoke wars that fall upon the head of innocence; the mother and the babe alike becoming the victims of exasperated savage feeling, provoked by the conduct of the military of our country. In this remark, I do not embrace all our Army officers, but I allude to the injudicious selections of young and inexperienced officers for these commands, whose habits, perhaps, involve them in excess of conduct. Sir, I know the Army; I appreciate it. It is now, I presume, as it was of old, composed of gallant and generous and noble
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