WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1845
436
fellows, these self-emblazoned patriots may open the escape pipes of their vanity, they may try to poison the minds of those who have never heard of me except through the channels of their vitiated communications-Endeavors have been used to impress the public mind with a belief that I had improperly corresponded with Santa Anna and other Mexican officers for the purpose of betraying the interests of my country. My defamers knew this to be untrue. I have given too many evidences of devotion to my country's best interests to permit myself to stain paper with any proposition that would not be honorable and glorious to my country-true to my countrymen and faithful to my trust. My official acts have been laid before my country. Had I, as my predecessors did, opened a secret correspondence with Arista, a gen 1• of the enemy's army; had I sent & recd. commissioners and permitted them to be present at the outset of the illfated Santa Fe expedition, and never laid these communications before the Congress of the country, I might have been charged with faithlessness to my office. Had I applied the resources of the country to expeditions of my own projecting, or applied money without appropriation by law to the amt. of hundreds of thousands what ,,vould have been the denunciations against me? Others have done so, and the mercy invoking plea "an error of the head & not of the heart" has been set up, and sustained by the charity of the general community. It may not be uninteresting fellow citizens to recur to the in- cidents of former years. Ere the beautiful prairie where this city now stands was marred by the existence of but a single log cabin, and the round tent so noted in those days there existed in the memory of many of you •scenes which would be difficult of description. This then became the seat of government and it was fit that here should be congregated the chief officers of State. One particularly will claim a passing notice. He was the second in dignity and was inducted into station Deer. '38." His classic renown, his late ad interim importance had thrown around him a factious reputation which more from a want of considera- tion of the people than from a merited consideration had become vice President. He was deeply imbued with rhetorical endow- ments, wrote well, had been President of a Temperance Society- a man who had drawn around him the sanctimonious robes of Christianity, who had figured, as I shall observe, in the outset of our revolution the same that is now the author of appendices to ' . books, writes letters and claims paternity of annexation-this
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