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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1859
338
[Some questions and answers about actual operation of mail coaches are omitted by the editors.] Mr. Houston. Not from San Antonio. It is very strange, sir, that the gentleman should seem to indicate that a dislocation or disconnection had taken place there. I am as anxious to accommo- date San Francisco as the gentleman is. I have no prejudices against it; but I do-think with regard to the distribution of intelligence throughout the country, that we ought not to regard · localities beyond their due importance, and that the object of mail facilities is to disseminate intelligence throughout the whole country, and not to concentrate it at any particular point beyond the importance and magnitude of the object. If you abolish this route, you do great detriment to the entire South. The North has its facilities by way of St. Louis. It has all the intercommunication of the transits. This route will ex- pedite and facilitate the communications between the Pacific and the northern States, for it commences at San Antonio and in twenty-four hours, I think, or thirty hours, it is at Indianola. Steamships arrive there, and bear the intelligence in a few days to New York and all the commercial points on the Atlantic; but if you abolish this route, you cut off that channel of intelligence, or block it up, and render it entirely useless; you cut off a vast extent of country from all mail facilities. Is there not constant communication necessarily maintained between Sonora, Cali- fornia, and Texas? Will you cut that great artery of intelligence in two, and deprive vast communities of all means of interchange of intelligence and arrest all intercommunication? I cannot conceive that the Senator is in earnest. He may enter- tain prejudices to the contractors. He may think they are favorites of the Department. He may think that undue consideration has been given to them; and, if his statements are all true, I would acknowledge it. It is a misfortune; but it is a misfortune that ought not to be visited upon the country which is essentially benefited by this route, and when those benefits are important and necessary to its well-being. I do not know the contractors; I do not expect ever to know them; but I know the advantages that arise from this route, and I maintain that they are essential -to the well-being of the State that I, in part, represent, and must be equally important to the interior of California. The Govern- ment must have communication; and there is no way so directly communicating with Fort Yuma, and those sections of California which are necessarily involved in difficulties, as by the route to San Antonio.
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