Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/149



a retirement of about one year, during Gen. Lamar's administration, Houston consented to represent his district in the Congress of 1839-40, and again in 1840-41. In no part of his history did his services yield more marked proofs of good service in arresting the tide of evil, and even in preventing a dissolution of the Government. It is impossible to do him justice without alluding to the policy and measures of the new administration.

Opposition to everything pursued and recommended by Houston was apparent in the inaugural address of the new President. Extermination of the Indians, hostility to annexation, the founding of a huge national bank, and the establishment of a splendid government, were all earnestly recommended.

The measures for the accomplishment of these great designs were presented to and adopted by the compliant Congress. One and a quarter millions of treasury notes were appropriated for frontier defence, a half million of the same currency for the civil list, and all without a dollar on which to base the issues. For the extermination of the frontier tribes a regular army of two regiments was to be raised. Happily, the project to locate the capital, originating largely in the spirit of speculation, has been the principal redeeming feature in the brilliant but otherwise barren administration of Gen. Houston's successor.

Confidence in the new Government was speedily lost. Depression of currency naturally followed. While Texas was at peace with Mexico, in the midst of disordered finances, the President caused a proposition to be introduced into both Houses of Congress, to conduct an expedition to Santa Fé, through a wilderness and prairie, more than five hundred miles distant. Although the proposition was presented in both Houses at the same time, it was by both rejected.

But in the face of rejection by Congress, during its recess in 1840, the President, on his own authority, ordered the expedition,