240
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1861
Dalrymple, of Williamson County, acting under comm1ss10n as aide-de-camp to the Executive, has been ordered to repair, to effect an organization of the troops, and to devise means for their efficiency. It affords the Executive pleasure to state that the Indians who committed the late depredations in Jack and Parker Counties have been overtaken and killed, by a force under command of Captain Ross, whose report will be submitted. The Executive, to support and render efficient the force which he had had from time to time in the field, has had no money at his command except the University Fund, amounting to $106,992.26, which was by special act of the Legislature authorized to be used for purposes of frontier defense. It was his opinion that the Legislature intended that this fund should be used alone for the defense of the Indian frontier, and not for the payment of claims on account of the war upon the :Rio Grande. The troubles upon the Rio Grande, although speedily settled after the arrival of the commissioners sent by the Executive, cost the State an amount far beyond the estimate of the Legislature, and when claims were presented for supplies furnished troops the Executive did not believe the money should be drawn from the University Fund, and expressed his views in that respect to the Comptroller. That fund was the sole dependence ·of the Executive for the purchase of supplies to keep troops in the field. A considerable sum was paid, however, from the fund for debts contracted during the Rio Grande war. This reduced the amount which might be used to defend the frontier to $76,937.73, which has been exhausted. The Executive, however, kept troops continually in the field, and until the present time supplied them, with the exception of the minute companies called out in each county. Not a dollar has been at his command for months. Deprived of money to purchase supplies, and with the fact before him that Treasury warrants were already selling at a heavy discount, the Executive might well have thrown upon others the responsibility of abandoning the frontier, and left the people to defend themselves. But neither this, nor the fact that many have continually denounced and misrepresented his efforts made in behalf of the frontier, have caused him to forego his exertions; on the contrary, they have been redoubled. At such periods a man, true to the obligations of his station and the instincts of humanity, should alike rise superior to the obstacles impending in his pathway, and the petty considerations of chagrin and disappointment at the conduct of those who ma- ligned and censured him; and it is a satisfaction to the Executive
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