WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1854.
43
religious division of the spoils, it becomes a very important transaction. It rises far above your ordinary fights with seventy- fours. Sir, there is another matter which is, perhaps, more important than all the others, to which I wish to refer. An idea has gone abroad that Commodore E. W. Moore has sustained the credit of Texas, and made disbursements for her benefit, and that by his private fortune she has been sustained in her conflicts. I think it due to Texas, whatever may have been her misfortunes, that she should at least be redeemed from the charge of swindling any private individual out of private means. I should be sorry if she had taken anybody's property without making ample restitu- tion. In our business transactions with relation to our currency and other matters of that sort, this imputation may rest upon us to some extent, if the world think proper to cast it. But, sir, I do not choose to have it alleged, when Texas has extended so much liberality towards this officer, that she has used his private means for her own advancement without compensating him. When he went to Texas he had no private means, nor has he had them to this day, except what he has derived from Texas. He speaks in the book which is before me of his great pecuniary sacrifices for the cause of Texas. This book, 0 I must inform the Senate, is a publication of his, vindicating himself against charges which he himself says were erroneously made. It is a vindication addressed to the people of Texas, and consists of no less than two hundred and four pages. He has published to the world what I will undertake to say does not in fact exist. He states in his book that an appropriation of $97,000 had been made for the support of the navy. This is true, but it was with the condition that it was payable only when there was money in the treasury to meet the appropriation. The President is accused of illegally and maliciously withholding this appropriation. Not one dollar had the President a right to issue; for the conditions of the appropriation had never transpired. But in another part, speaking of his sacrifices, he says that he paid out of his own pocket, in pa1· funds, upwards of $23,000 to keep the navy from disbanding; and again, in another place, that he used his in- dividual means and credit to the amount of $34,700 in sustaining the navy. Why, sir, it will be seen that, on examination, this man had not one dollar when he went to Texas. I will prove that conclusively; and he never used a dollar while he was there, unless it was the money of the Republic. Sir, I wish to redeem Texas from the
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