Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/174

 Congress, which convened in the city of Houston, on the 1st of May following, A.D. 1837.

The session was opened by President Houston in person. In his address to Congress, he emphatically counselled "the maintenance of our integrity, and the faithful and just redemption of our plighted faith, wherever it has been pledged." This is the keynote of Houston's financial administration. With him, it meant not only that we should redeem our pledges when we have the means, the money to do so, but also to so guard the making of pledges, and to so manage our affairs, that we, Texas, may be surely able to redeem them.

It is not here the place to enter minutely into the financial history of the Republic. Consequently, we omit details which would only interest persons curious in political and financial history, and confine ourselves mainly to leading facts which throw light on President Houston's financial principles, his policy, and his action, and which serve to illustrate their wholesome influence on the solidification of our institutions, and on the prosperity of the Republic of Texas.

At this second session of the first Congress an act was passed for funding the public debts. These consisted of audited drafts of various amounts for civil and military services, and for supplies furnished to the Republic. These audited drafts were in no sense a currency, though they served in irregular trades occasionally, and in barter. The bonds into which these drafts were converted were of the usual form of Government bonds, transferable only on the books of the treasury. They bore on their face the promise of interest of 10 per cent, per annum, one year from date. The currency of the country was at this time, and had been, gold and silver and bank notes, mostly of the New Orleans banks.

Some two or three days after the passing of the Funding Act, Congress passed another act for the issuance of promissory notes of the Government, to an amount not exceeding $500,000, bearing interest at 10 per cent., redeemable in twelve months, and receivable for all public dues. Not being reissuable, they were, strictly speaking, treasury notes or exchequers, and were issuable only in payment for civil services and civil supplies. They were printed with common type, on common book paper. They had in their center a large five-pointed star, from which star they received the name by which they were afterward designated, of star money. There was a sharp conflict of opinion between the Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Smith, about the details of this act, from which it may be fairly inferred that the act did not altogether please the administration of President Houston. But Gen,