WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1854
39
From the official report of James W. 1 Moore, the Commodore's secretary and brother, I make this extract: "At thirty-five minutes past eleven o'clock a sixty-eight pound shot, from the Guadalupe, cut the after shroud of the mizzen rigging about eight feet above the dead eye, (Commodore Moore holding the shroud at the time,) passed between Commodore Moore and Lieutenant Gray-would have killed both of them, but that the one doclged to the right, and the other to the left-passed through the poop deck into the cabin, and passed out the stern." That was a very natural direction, I think for the shot. This was reported in the papers of Texas. It created a sensation at Galveston. That was a place of celebrity. It was the great commercial metropolis of Texas ; and there were the partisans who had conspired against the Government and the Executive, and had declared that the Administration, if it did not yield to their dictation, should be put down, if it was done by a revolution. This was a most joyous announcement, and I need not tell you the eclat which attached to the hero who had achieved this mighty thing. Why, sir, Nelson had not half the address, or he never would have lost his arm; he never would have been presented to the world mutilated after the action of Trafalgar. If the gallant Senator from Illinois [Mr. Shields] had half the perception of the commodore to discover the shot, he never would have been shot through the breast, he could have dodged it; and so could Moreau, who was killed by a cannon shot. So, too, Charles XII, of Sweden might have survived. Why, sir, he would have conquered Russia if he had possessed half the tact of the Texas commodore to perceive a Paixhan shot, and dodge it. I do not know which way he dodged, whether to the right or to the left, but I have no doubt he dodged right. [Laughter.] Well, sir, his dodging did not end there. After that, no orders went from Texas as a matter of course. '.rhe authority of Texas over the navy had been disavowed. Not only the commodore himself, the officer next in command, but the very commissioners appointed for a single purpose, had also disregarded the authority of the Government. They remained there; and it is a remarkable fact that the persons with whom they were allied are not very well spoken of by anybody. But, sir, previous to that time, in 1842, shortly after Commodore Moore was ordered to New Orleans, he was not satisfied with disobeying the orders of the Government, but went forward to form an alliance with Yucatan, an integral part of the Mexican Republic, and thus to compromit
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