WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 18£17
'542
Mr. Benton. She has had seventeen in twenty-five years. Mr. Houston. And yet we are to regard her as an organized Government entitled to our sympathies, and we are to withhold the infliction of necessary and well-deserved chastisement? He could not so regard her. If Mexico had an established govern- ment-if her usurpations were not now almost daily, and her acts of despotism glaring and flagitious, he might feel for her some sympathy. But when he saw her citizens deprived of their liber- ties-when he saw her people in a more abject condition than southern slaves on plantations-he could not feel for her any sympathy. He should rather endeavor to relieve that people from such a thraldom, and give them liberty while he chastised their despots. An honorable Senator had alluded to their partiality for the soil, and the respect they felt for the place where the bones of their ancestors were laid. He had spoken of their patriotic throes. He spoke of their remembrance of their Bunker Hills, their Lexingtons, and their Yorktowns. But was it not sacrilege to the memory of our ancestors thus to associate them with Mexicans? He desired to be pointed to one field in Mexico which would entitle her to associations with the name of Bunker Hill, or Lexington, or Yorktown, or any other achievement of ours. Did perfidy give triumph to our revolutionary fathers? Did cruelty characterize their achievements? Where could a parallel be found in Mexico to Bunker Hill? Would they find it in the con- secrated soil of Texas? He could not believe that our Revolution had been effected by acts ~hich outrage humanity, or that our fathers had relied on duplicity, ambuscades and faithlessness, which characterized the Mexicans. Would they go to the fields of Texas to see how Mexican warfare was characterized? What said Goliad? Did that afford a parallel to Lexington? And the Alamo-what said the history of that memorable event? But, to return from this digression, he could not believe that peace could ever be brought about with Mexico until she had felt the calamities of war. We must march, not merely to her borders to annoy her there-for we should only add to the miseries of her inhabitants and the extortion of her rulers, by affording them a pretence for extortion under the plea of necessity to de- fend the country-we must strike home. Let them know we are not warring against the rights of their citizens-against the oppressed people of Mexico, nor their priesthood, nor their
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