241
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON,- 1859
The members of the company seem to have a great aptitud€ for "log rolling," and the disreputable appliances of the lobby. They must have considered themselves very potential in t_!lis respect, to judge from the frequent propositions of the kind. They had supreme confidence in themselves; and their continued successes seem to have inspired the belief, that there was naught too difficult or too high for spirits like theirs to dare. As a further instance of the determined courage of these honest gentlemen and their resolves to do or die, I am tempted here to give one other extract of a letter from Reynolds to John- son, written at New York. It suggests, too, the desperate char- acter of the enterprise for which the writer required men of "nerve" to adventure in the boat now floating down the stream of success, but which might at any time be dashed upon the rocks. He writes as follows: "New York, May 4, 1847. My Dear Sir: . . . We play for empire, and will see it to the end. If you find any of your moneyed friends who have the nerve to go into this boat with us, at this stage of our vayage, I will give them an interest on the most favorable terms. As to the value of the lands there can be no doubt. Does the judge talk of coming North? · J. N. Reynolds. 0. F. Johnson, Esq." From the point to ·which I have now reached, in the narration of facts as to the organization, the object, and the means of this company, the history becomes more interesting, inasmuch as it directly involves the acts of Judge Watrous, and exposes, over their own signature, in letters, the shameless schemes of the members of the company, to corrupt the courts of the United States. The first movement of the parties in the court seems to have been the institution of a made-up suit, to test the question how far the fraudulent land certificates might be validated on the action of the courts. The suit- 1 was brought in Judge Watrous's court, by Phalen, a citizen of New York, against Herman, a citizen of Texas, on a promissory note for $3,000, dated 5th July, 1846, at ninety days. The inspection of the correspondence of the land company, betrays the fact that this man Phalen was the president of that company, and a confederate of Judge Watrous.
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