266
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1843
their return to Austin they would put the Commissioner of the General Land Office, Colonel Thomas William Ward, to death: and further declared that if the President had been taken and given up to them, they would freely have surrendered the archives. They are represented to have been in a state of intoxication, and unreserved in their threats against the person and life of the Chief Magistrate of the country. These are the facts, transmitte~ in accordance with the call of the House. To offer comments upon them would seem to be an insult to the common sense and good understanding of every member. A sense of duty to our general constituency, to our national character, and the respect we may hope for from abroad and for order and self existence at home, constrain me to believe that the Honorable Congress will adopt such efficient measures, or empower the Executive to do so, as will secure the safety of the archives. Their removal is connected with no individual grat- ification which the President can feel. He regards the matter as one purely of national import. Their loss would involve the nation in inextricable confusion, injury and expense; and a longer postponement of the action of the Congress can be attended with no other than the most pernicious effects. Those whose interests are identified with transactions under our land laws, cannot but feel deep solicitude that the records which constitute the basis and evidence of their rights should be placed beyond the reach of danger and destruction. At least nine tenths of the citizens of the country are thus more or less concerned. Shall their rights be sur- rendered to the keeping and control of a mob who have so long openly trodden down the constitution and contemned the authori- ties of the land? If the archives are not perserved, the blame cannot attach to the Executive. Congress has had, and at this time has the power to sustain him in the discharge of his trust and the execution of his duty, and if they are destroyed by any means whatever, the evil will then be felt by all; and the question will then be asked, "Why has it come upon us? Could it have been averted? and, by what means?" Interest and injury will give a ready answer to every inquiry. If the Mexicans again visit us in forty-five days from this time, and the archives survive destruction in the inter- val, consternation, dismay, and disaster may swallow up for the
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