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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
of the Congress to meet him at Houston. They obeyed the summons; every thing was now on tiptoe, all anxiety, and great expectations en- tertained respecting the important measures which his Excellency's message would recommend to the serious consideration of that body, now in anxious waiting; when lo and behold, out crept the mouse A more peurile insignificant document was never sent to a deliberative body A beggarly account of empty coffers; not only telling us what we allready knew, but evincing to the world, and our enemy particu- larly, that we was not only unable to make offensive war, but totally unable to make a defence and as such, was fitted for nothing but a l\Iexican department I refer my readers to the :Message itself; which from the number of times the term was used, has been very appro- priately called the means message Under all the excitement (which himself had created, but could not controll) we see this skillful en- gineer industriously employed in his mining and sapping operations; covertly and secretly attending to what he considered his own individ- ual interests It will be recollected by my readers that while a legis- lator he had succeeded as far as he could in tieing up the cherokee territory from individual interfearance, without entrusting a part of the management into other hands, which he would not hazard; but left it open for himse.lf now to complete; as the expedition failed in a grand part of its mition He urged on the Congress the propriety of vesting in him the authority to hypothecate the indian territory alledg- ing that it was the only untrammeled property belonging to the Gov- ernment, by which means he felt assured he could raise ample means, not only for defensive, but offensive operations. The power given to him to hypothecate would be making a special reserve by law which was all he wanted The hypothecation would never have been made nor was it intended; his sole object being to place it beyond individual interfearance His specious pretexts, to get his bill passed, alledging it was to keep up the integrity of the Country, did not however appro- priate it specially, and we can now see his estimate of integrity for which he expressed so much solicitude. As soon as he gets in to be President, and before he left Austin he pays off the public debt by a single dash of his pen by repudiation So much for his integrity to the Country? That which presented itself to Congress as an abstract question; that is whether this territory had ever been owned by the indians or not, as he alledged, and about which they cared but little, save those directly interested, he well knew before the judicial tri- bunals, would come up as a direct question, and that his assumed position could not be sustained; for he knew as well as I do, that those indians were nothing but intruders and that of the most unwelcome character He was well aware that notwithstanding he was President, that both his officers and himself could be ruled by mandamus, or sub- ject themselves to impeachment And to avoid which, he determined to abandon the archives and call in the Bexar invasion with a view to their final destruction, and if that failed to suspend all land operations so that the dreaded question should not be mooted until he could get the action of Congress to place the power in his own hands. This con- clusion is warranted from the facts and ,circumstances The called session did not understand him however, and instead of giving him the power to hypothecate, they gave him the authority to sectionise and sell; this was directory, and what he did not want; because it did not
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