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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 184-2
With every disposition to favor the action of Congress and to extend that indulgence to individual citizens, consistent with a due regard to the general welfare, I regret to say, I have not found the bill before me, upon justice and policy, entitled to my sanction. ' ·Whatever may be the merits of Captain Greer's claims for compensation, ( to which I perceive no objection), the fact that colonel Moore's 3 command obtained a large amount of spoil from the enemy, consisting of many hundred horses, &c., which was not turned over to the government, but appropriated to their own individual use, and probably quite an equivalent for their services, induces me to return the bill to the House in which it originated, without my signature. 1 The Executive Record Book, No. 40, p. 18, Texas State Library. Z'fhomas N. B. Greer, a native of Tennessee, emigrated to Texas with a brother, Andrew Greer, in 1835. He served in the Texas army from April 15, to June 4, 1836, being honorably discharged on the latter date. (See Compt1·olle1·'s Military Se1·vic.e Rec01·ds, Texas State Library.) On Febru- ary 22, 1840, President Lamar commissioned him to organize a company of rangers; in June, 1842, he was killed on the Trinity, near Alabama in ;Houston County, in an engagement with the Indians. His wife was a daughter of Stephen Rogers. Dixon and Kemp, Heroes of San Jacinto, 80. · 3 John H. Moore was an early settler of Texas. He was born in Rome, Smith County, Tennessee, in 1800. He visited Texas in 1818, but returned to Tennessee, but in 1821, he moved to Texas and became one of the first settlers on the upper Colorado. He was the original owner of the town site of LaGrange, Fayette County. He was a bold and successful Indian fighter, ~nd for eight years was the leader in most of the Indian fights in central and eastern Texas. In 1834, he led an expedition against the Tehuacanas and Wacos on the upper Brazos; in 1838 he attacked a large Comanche village on the San Saba, but the Indians were too strong, so the Texans :were ·compelled to fall back. In 1840 he commanded another expedition against the Comanches, and destroyed a large village high up on the Colo- rado. Moore was one of the earliest and most zealous advocates for the independence of Texas; because of his zeal for this cause, Cos ordered him to be arrested in 1835. When the volunteers assembled at Gonzales in 1835 (October) to hold, by force, possession of the cannon at that place, Moore was elected to command them. John H. Moore developed a large plantation in Fayette County, which he operated by the labor of more than one hundred negro slaves whom he owned. Most of his great fortune was swept away by the Civil War, but his landed estate remained, and by energy and economy, he accumulated another modest fortune before his death in 1880. See Ben C. Stuart, Texas Fighters and F1·ontie1· Rangers, (MS), The University of Texas Library, p. 233; Thrall, A Pictorial Hist01·y of Texas, 595; Wooten (ed.), A Comprehensive History of Texas, I, 180-181, 364-365; J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Dep1·edations in Texas, 144-146, 183-185; also William C. Binkley (ed.), Official Corresvondence of the Texan Revol11~ tion, I, 109, 347.
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