WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1843
264
upon the lower parts of the Colorado - if they should not be met and successfully combatted at the Guadalupe. Had the emergency which dictated the removal of the archives arisen whilst the Congress was in session, it would clearly have been within their province to have provided for their security; but as Congress was not in session it devolved on the Executive to give the order and to adopt such measures as he thought proper in reference to it, and as all conceived the emergency required. He regards every measure which he has since adopted as a continuance of that first order. The Congress has been once in session since that original order was given. They fore- bore to act upon the subject and subsequently another emergency arose. The executive's conviction of the propriety of the removal has undergone no change; and the Congress declining to act upon the subject enforced upon him the necessity of pursuing the course he took, and which he believes in perfect accordance with the past and future interests and policy of the country. That the archives of the Republic, in justice to the people of the country, should be preserved no one will pretend to deny. That they never have been safe at Austin, since 1840 at least, all must deduce from facts which have and which now exist. For the preservation of the persons and lives of the inhabitants of that place, a fortification was in that year, at great expense, con- structed around the capitol; and though it gave no security to the archives and left them exposed, it nevertheless proved the fact most conclusively, that it was not a place of safety. For, if the inhabitants had been destroyed, what protection was there for the archives? This, too, was done at a time when two regular regiments were in the field, and, when there were three or four officers of government to one at the present time, who would have swelled the muster rolls for defence. Before the rise of the last session of Congress which sat at Austin, the Executive asked for the means of protection for the archives. His application was disregarded; and by law he had no authority to call out a force for that purpose, nor means appropriated for its subsistence, un- less in case of actual invasion. In that event it would be too late, and disaster evince the want of precaution. Recently the Executive has derived assurance from a chairman of a late "Archive Committee," that there was no safety there for the archives; and he has further been verbally assured that it would not be necessary for him to send many wagons for the j I l
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