WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1843
221
To A COMMITTEE OF lNVITATION 1
Washington, July 25th, 1843. To Messrs. B. B. Goodrich and Others, Committee, Montgomery County, Gentlemen:- I tender you my thanks for your kind invitation to a barbecue, and with pleasure announce to you its acceptance. Saturday the 29th inst., I take the liberty of naming as the day to meet my friends who have so much honored me. I will not suppress on this occasion the gratification which I feel in receiving the expression of my friends and countrymen of their approbation of the course which it has been my duty to pursue, and one from which I never will deviate in the discharge of a public trust. It is true that the floodgates of calumny and abuse have been drawn against me, and every effort made to intimidate or deter me from pursuing such a course as I felt confident would redound to the honor and advantage of my country. We find that the oldest and best regulated communities believe that their condition could be much improved and many evils corrected. If with them it is the case, how much more ir- regularity and disorder a new country like Texas has to expect. Peace to Texas on honorable terms has been my constant desire. With undeviating comfidence since 1836 have I pursued this policy. ·The wise, the good, and .men of substance in the country who render obedience to the laws, and are not too good to walk between their plough handles, or manage in the cultivation of the soil, or pursue honest industry for a livlihood, have desired an honorable peace. I have desired none other! For peace on any other terms would compromise the honor of my country and disappoint its prosperity. The idle, the lazy, the wild visionaries or wilder speculators without capital, and those who are insubordinate to the laws have clamorously urged a war of invasion without means, a plan as destructive to individual happiness as it must have proved to national honor and prosperity. Peace will disappoint those mad projects, and I sincerely hope that the day is not distant "when every man in Texas shall sit under his own vine and worship under his own fig tree, and none in all the land to make him afraid."
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