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WRITINGS OF SAM HousTo·N, 1859
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admission of Hughes himself, made in a letter to Lapsley, writ- ten when he was in attendance on the cases in New Orleans, April, 1853: "I will press the cases to trial with the utmost rigor. I do not expect there will be any counsel here for the defendants." There is something here of almost pathetic interest to claim the earnest attention of this honorable body. This poor settler, it appears, had planted a home as early as 1847, on what was then the extreme frontier of Texas, and had lived through hardships and dangers difficult to depict, until at last he had secured, as he fondly imagined, a permanent resting plare for his life, and had commenced to gather the fruits of his toils and privations, to sustain his wife and children. This land was included in the La Vega tract, and he was the principal defend, ant, representing in the business the other settlers, who had planted themselves around him. He was sued in every shape, and it would seem that every ingenuity of his opponents was taxed to betray him. It appears from the evidence that the suit instituted against him at Galveston was removed to Austin, \.\-ithout any order of transfer having been made in the case; that he had no lawyer employed to attend to it at Austin, and that when all the cases were removed to New Orleans, and the transcript carried there, he heard for the first time, and, then, too, not from those who were prosecuting and attempting to betray him, of Judge Watrous's long-concealed interest in the suits, and their removal on that account to New Orleans. No sooner is he made aware of this; no sooner does he perceive the long-matured conspiracy to keep him in ignorance and to oetray him and his co-suitors, than the poor intended victim is suddenly aroused, hurries to New Orleans, six hundred miles away, and confronts in the court.:room the confederate of Judge Watrous for his ruin, at the very moment that he is saying to the court that the suits would not be defended. \Vell might Mr. Hughes exclaim, "Oh! Mr. Spencer!" at the dramatic surprise; and well may our sympathies be prompted by the apparition on the stage of the poor man come to save his home from the grasp of the spoiler; and yet at the last, by the renewed acts and influences of corrupt and powerful men, he is turned from it. It has been shown that it was the expectation of Hughes to have the Lapsley cases dispatched, and to use the deposition of James Hewitson as to the execution of the power of attorney, taken, as. has been seen, surreptitiously, and by a fraudulent
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