248
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1859
to promise the sheriff, as an incentive, the $175 which, as you wrote us, the banks agree to advance for expenses. Judge Toler is quite anxious about the 'Grant claims.' The papers in Holman's hands I hope you will be able to procure. The original certificates of the grant, ninety- seven in number, have been just found among Judge W's papers. Toler said he would be at the North this summer. A. Allen has already gone on. I suppose you have seen him. He will give you some trouble in arrang- ing this matter.... Judge Watrous will be in New York about the first of August. He has been detained here by business. William G. Hale." The papers referred to in the above letter, as sent to San Antonio, by Colonel Wilson, were fraudulent land certificates, exceeding one million acres, besides an indefinite number which Hale, in his instructions to Wilson, designates a "No. 2; a list of those in the hands of Miner," the agent referred to in the letter from Hale to Watrous, as dealing with bar-room vaga- bonds, and cheating them for the benefit of his principal. I may here introduce another letter from Hale to Johnson, showing the prosecution of the designs of the conspirators, as dealing in these fraudulent certificates in defiance of the penal statute, showing also the great estimation of the advantage of having these certificates put into a company stock, and "man- aged" by Judge Watrous and his confederates for to secure this advantage, one hundred and fifty thousand out of three hun- dred thousand acres is offered as a premium: "Austin, February 24, 1847. My Dear Sir : . . . Colonel __________________________ met here with an old acquaintance, Colonel ------------, and, what is more to the purpose, a large landholder in the East. Through some former business connections with him, _________ was able to persuade him to an arrangement most advantageous to us. _______ holds about sixty of the rejected-ah! call them not fraudulent! and thinks he can secure as many more. He is willing to give us half in order to have the others put into the company stock, and located and managed with the rest; most kindly offered to divide with us, so that this arrange- ment will secure us about thirty more leagues, or one hundred and fifty thousand acres contingently. -- has gone home now to obtain them. He speaks in the • most disrepectful terms of Miner and his management.
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