WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1858
505
from the time proclamation is made, they will be organized and ready to march from Missouri, from Iowa, from Texas, from California. Allowing twenty miles per day, it would take them fifty days to go to Utah from Fort Leavenworth, or from Iowa, or from Texas. It would require mounted volunteers to accom- plish the distance in that time. If they were infantry, it would take seventy-five or eighty days; and they could not start until May or June. In the course of sixty days at the farthest, you could have in Utah, from Texas two regiments, from Missouri two regiments, and from Iowa two regiments, or as many as are necessary for the emergency. When this is done they return to their homes, and they are no further cost or charge to you. But admitting that their expenses are double those of regular troops while they are in service, when the campaign is over the expense ceases. If there is an emergency now calling on us for action, volunteer troops are the only ones suited to the occasion. If the object is to increase the standing Army, I am opposed to it. These are my views in relation to this emergency, and I am as anxious to see the country quiet as any one. I think that volun- teers, active, sprightly, animated young men, going to that coun- try, would be the best means of breaking up the Mormons. When they get there they will feel that they are cut off from the rest of the world; they will be delighted with the country, and be pleased to settle there. They will take wives from amongst the Mormons, and that will break up the whole establishment; it will take away their capital. [Laughter.] My convictions are, that the true reliance of the country for its defense is on the volunteers. If you undertake to keep up a· large army, the result will be deleterious to the country. If you add during each presidential term four regiments, you will have, in the course of the administration of five Presidents, in twenty years, twenty thousand men in addition to the present force. If you think it necessary to increase the Army, in that ratio, very well; but I think that is a course which ought not to be presisted in. If I were to remain in this body, I should urge on the atten- tion of this nation the civilization of the Indian tribes, and in this way we should dispense with a portion of the military force. When Texas was a Republic, her border extended for six hundred or eight hundred miles from the Eed River to the Rio Grande; and when the conflagration of her hamlets proclaimed that hostile Indians were on the borders, where they had been left by the . President in 1838 in peace and harmony, when they were excited by Mexico to depredate on our borders, and commit murder, what
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