330
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1859
This is the Rev. James H. Perry, D. D. His letter from the Brazos shall be published after I return to Texas. It shall appear in the New York Herald. It will vindicate all I have said. He says, in his letter from camp, that the general was not in the habit of drinking ardent spirits, but was a confirmed opium- eater. I believe there never was one of them cured, and the general looks very little like an opium-eater. His correspondent was the notorious Robert Potter, of North Carolina, who was Secretary of the Navy in Texas. The general had no hand in making him so. He was the gentleman with whom the reverent doctor corresponded. He acknowledged himself his spy and pimp upon the general, and they were a most worthy pair. 10 These are some of the circumstances that I have felt it my duty to state in vindication of the Commander-in-chief. I think it is a duty that a man owes, after he has passed his life pretty much in the service of his country, and is about to retire from that service, that he should do a little redding up, and arranging of matters which posterity may not so well comprehend without explanation. I will call the attention of the honorable Senate to one fact; and I will ask, why was the council called, and why was it desired? Because the indications were clear that the Commander-in-chief intended that day to engage the enemy; that his arrangements, though silent, indicated his purpose. There were persons who censured him conduct from time to time, and charged him with cowardice. He was charged with retreating from Gonzales, and from the Colorado, and under a pressure of circumstances crossing the Brazos, with a design to cross the Trinity, and go east. Why did they not then call a council to counteract his designs? Why did they not interpose to prevent these things if they believed them? No council of war was asked for until on the eve of battle, and the gentleman who was the first to flee from the field, and who was charged with appropriat- ing the spoils privately, was most active in that council. The spoils are a matter of some import. Is it supposable that Santa Anna, with his Mexican ostentation, would march at the head of the finest army ever marshaled in Mexico and not have with him plate and jewels becoming the condition of a man whose sway was absolute, and whose expectation on his return was to assume the imperial purple and the scepter of the Mexican mon- archy? What ever became of these spoils? The Commander-in- chief of the Texas army decreed the spoils to the army. Nor did he ever receive the value of one cent. Colonel Sherman was
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