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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1847
513
physician from New Orleans? Or would a man from New England be well calculated to serve with a regiment from the interior of Missouri? Would you take a physician who was perfectly ignorant of the constitutions or former habits of the soldiers, or of the region from which they came? Surely not. There was a fitness, a humanity in allowing the officer to select those who would most possess their confidence. If it was per- mitted him to refer to experience in this matter, his own (which had been very small) fully corroborated every position he had taken. To say that men would not discharge the duties of soldiers because they were not called regulars, was surely absurd. The name of regulars did not change the men, unless it was to associate them with a disgusting idea. But it was said that regulars were more suitable for these regiments, because volunteers could not be relied on. He should not descant on this idea, but look at the material of the regular army. Men picked up here and there, of dissolute character, and degraded by every vice ; men who marched to the drum head as the last resort, perhaps to escape from their creditors, or to obtain a bare support. Such was not the material of which the auxiliary army of Texas was composed. They were to be trusted in all circumstances. There was no want in regard to men like these. From the commencement of the Revolution to the very last acts of that eventful history they had sustained the credit of their flag, and fully proved that a citizen soldiery knew how to fight and bravely to defend the liberty of their country. How had it been in the last war? Let gentlemen who doubted whether volunteers could be safely relied on, go to the Thames, where the Kentucky troops proved their valor, and where the Ohio volunteers so nobly sustained the honor of the American arms. Let them go to Sackett's Harbor, where our soldiers were led by a militia general, and they would find there the volunteers. Let them go either to the West, or to the South. Let them look at the army in Tennessee, that glorious army which met the fanatical savage Creeks; they were volunteers. To be sure there was one battalion of militia somewhat dissatisfied, and some of them returned home. But all the rest of the entire army were volunteers, with the exception of a single battalion of regulars; yet they sustained themselves nobly in that war. How was it at New Orleans? Did not the volunteers nobly sustain them- selves? True, there were a few regulars associated with them;
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