WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1842
95
numerous friends would under other circumstances be pleased with your continued presence among us, yet feeling confident of the benefit likely to result to you from your contemplated ab- sence, no word of dissuasion can be interposed. If you go, you will carry with you my prayers for your health and safe return. You will allow me, my dear Sir, to use this occasion to say that your bearing and conduct during your residence among us has always been such as to inspire personal regard and attachment, and to sustain most honorably the exalted character of your worthy & illustrious sovereign and gallant nation. Be pleased, my dear Sir, to accept assurance of my sincere regard and friendship 1 From Mr. Al Dealey's Collection of Houston Letters, Dallas, Texas. The letter in Mr. Dealey's collection is clearly in the handwriting of Wash• ington D. Miller who was Houston's private secretary in 1842. This lette1 is without signature, and within the body of it there are several deletions, showing that it was probably the first draft of a letter that was sent to Saligny. To THE TEXAS SENATE 1 Executive Department, City of Houston, July 8, 1842. To the Honorable, the Senate: Influenced by a due regard for my present and future fame as an honest man, and by an earnest desire that, whilst the memory of events is still fresh and witnesses still living, all my actions in life may be subjects to the severest and most impartial scrutiny; I beg leave to lay before your Honorable Body, as the most appro- priate reference, the enclosed extract from a letter addressed by a correspondent to my predecessor and by him filed in the secret archives of the Department of State. The statement of the present Acting Secretary of State ac- companies/ which will explain the circumstances, and perhaps give some clew to the motives which induced its being placed, as it was, where it would be most likely to escape the notice of the party concerned, and whence it might be at some distant day, evolved and thrust upon the world as the legitimate and con- clusive evidence of the alleged crime,- and by the world it might be received as such from the fact of its having been ·within my 1·each and control and uncontradicted. I at first regarded the affair as a silly and futile attempt upon my reputation for some present purpose; but, upon more mature reflection, I am forced to believe it was designed to have effect
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