504
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 184 7
this service he was chief justice of the county court, judge of the probate court for Brazoria County, and was again elected to the Senate in 1845. When Texas was admitted to the Union, Pilsbury was elected, as a Calhoun Democrat, to the Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth United States congresses, and served from March 30, 1846, to March 3, 1849. He was the unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1848 to the Thirty-first Congress. He died in Henderson, then in Rusk County, November 23, 1858, and is buried in the Henderson Cemetery. See The Quartedy, Texas State Historical Association, V, 33; E. W. Winkler (ed.), Secret Jounials of the Senate, Republic of Texas, 1836-1845, 204, 230. Biog1·aphical Directory of the American Congress (1928), p. 1413. SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 22, AND FEB- RUARY 1, 1847, IN FAVOR OF VOLUNTEER FORCES 1 Mr. Houston rose and said that it had not been his desire to occupy any portion of the time of the Senate in a discussion of the bill now under consideration. But, having submitted some new points in his amendments, and entertaining the views he did in relation to the organization of the troops to be inlisted for the service of this country in the war with Mexico, he felt it to be a duty incumbent upon him; and, in the discharge of that duty, he would endeavor to give such an explanation of his views as it might be in his power to give. The bill proposed the organization of an efficient corps for the purpose of conducting this war to a conclusion, in case proposals of peace should not be made by Mexico. Upon this subject, he had had, since the commencement of our difficulties with Mexico, but one opinion, and that was, that peace never would be obtained by any other means than by making them feel the calamities of war in their utmost rigor. If they had not yet felt those calamities to the extent necessary to dispose them to conclude a peace, it was fit that this Government should make them feel them, and their inclination would then be governed by their necessities. This corps, as proposed, would not be considered as a regular corps, or as forming a portion of the regular army, but as auxiliary to the regular army in the emer- gency which now existed. There would be a little distinction between this corps and the regulars, and also between this corps and the militia and volunteers raised by calls from the several States. To create an efficient corps, it seemed to him that they should be organized so that they would feel that they were at- tached to the army of the Federal Government, and that they were not dependent upon, as receiving their existence from, the Execu- tive Departments of the several States. The corps now in service
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