WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1854
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and when he reaches the Pacific terminus of that road, he will hardly ever return. Not long after the discussions to which I have just alluded, an interesting event transpired in Texas. A certain West Florida bank blew up, the notes of which were utterly worthless. Over $30,000 of this spurious stuff was introduced into Texas. It fell into the hands of sundry persons, and among others, the illustrious author of this memoir. He gave circulation to these notes, and when they were doubted they were indorsed with his name to show they were "perfectly good." Some of them are yet in exist- ence with his indorsement, as I have been assured. One gentleman has three thousand dollars of them. Green bought a plantation, I believe, for which he paid $20,000 in this paper. The gentleman from whom he bought the plantation followed the matter up, and he had to disgorge. This is the way he acted in Texas ; and yet in the railroad speech to which I have referred, he had the audacity to say that his private fortune, and nine of the best years of his life, were given to Texas, and that therefore he was entitled to great consideration from Texians. Why, sir, he was a bankrupt when he left Florida, and I am told he was a fugitive. He had nothing when he came to Texas but a reputation of equivocal import; and yet on the 17th December, 1836, the Texas Legis- lature passed a resolution granting him $24,154.04 as expenses incurred in mustering his gallant thirty-sixth brigade. This, sir, is another parallel case to that of Commodore E. W. Moore's, and shows the way these rich men went to Texas and spent_their private fortunes for her. Sir, this man never rendered one dollar's worth of service to Texas. He never faced an enemy in the cause of Texas; he never raised an arm in her defense; he never did anything but what tended to bring disrepute and dishonor upon her. The extracts which I have read show a state of feeling on Green's part which grew out of the assumption that the President was actuated by personal dislike and hatred to him and Colonel Fisher. Fisher was a brave man; but who could hate Green? No one, I trust, unless some woman whom he had robbed, and it might be just and proper that she should. I have referred to his robbing expedition at Loredo, for which he sought to justify him- self. On the 11th of February the rising on the guard to which I have referred took place. On the 26th of March following was the decimation and execution of the Mier prisoners. They had been as carefully treated as prisoners could be in that country, from the 25th of December, up to the rising on the guard in
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