WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1860
55
they have conducted themselves as rangers, whether discipline and subordination have been maintained, and whether or not they have, in any instance, depredated upon the inhabitants, tak- ing and destroying provisions, cattle, horses and other articles for the use of the service without authority and without properly accounting for the same. All of this and any other information you may get possession of you will enter at large upon your Journal, and forward abstracts or duplicates to this Department. Should you deem it necessary to continue any Detachment for a longer time in the field, you will muster such Detachment or Detachments out of service first instructing the Lieutenant thereof to hold himself in readiness should occasion require and the Chief Justice of the County deem it necessary to call the Detachment into the field again. Should you find any of the men belonging to the Detachment useless and inefficient you will order the Lieutenant to discharge them and if it should be actually necessary to the protection of the inhabitants to fill such vacancies by substitution. Should you find it necessary to muster out any of the minute Detachments, you will require the Lieutenant to state upon oath the exact number of days served by each man in the pursuit of Indians and in protecting the inhabitants, separate and apart from the days employed in hunting stock or occupied in other engagements. You will use every possible dispatch in executing the duty con- fided to your care and report to the Executive Department at this place, making communications to this Department as often as possible, stating when you will be at different points ahead. Sam Houston.
1 Executive Records, 1859-1861, p. 158, Texas State Library.
To SAM HousToN, JR. 1
Austin, 15th May, !860. My dear Son. Your letter has come to hand, and I have sent it to your Ma. It will gratify her, and I was well enough pleased with it, but climate is not the only thing to look at in such mat- ters. The propositions involve the welfare of more than forty millions of people now living, besides the well being of millions unborn. You ought to look through the march of centuries, and the multiplication of our race, the march of Christianity, and the
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