Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/178

 money, they bore no interest. These acts, submitted to President Houston for his approval, were returned to Congress with elaborate, earnest vetoes, in vain. They were passed by Congress triumphantly over the vetoes. The new notes issued under these acts being well engraved and printed on good bank paper, with a red ground, had quite a bank-note look—quite unlike the old star money printed with common type on a very common paper. Such was the original of the famous redbacks.

With these acts of Congress of 1838, passed the last year of Houston's administration, so greatly enlarging the new issue of treasury notes, thereafter known as redbacks, and discarding previous wholesome restrictions, commenced their decline in value. They nevertheless maintained to the close of President Houston's first administration their circulation as currency in ordinary business transactions. They were worth, or rather were valued at, seventy cents or seventy-five cents on the dollar when General Houston's Presidential term closed—the loth December, 1838.

At the close of Houston's first administration the public debt of Texas amounted to a little over a million dollars. The report of his Secretary of the Treasury states the amount of audited claims at $1,090,984. Of this amount $903,720 were for military services. It had mostly accrued in the active campaigns of the Revolution, and in the support and pay of the army until it was furloughed in the summer of 1837. To diminish public expenses in accordance with the economical system of the administration the army was furloughed till, every company and squad told, it did not amount to one battalion of a full regiment. There was no risk in thus virtually disbanding the army. For on the first tap of the drum the ranks would be filled, and competent officers were on hand to lead them. And further, several offices, civil and military, were abolished, and the pay and expenses of others greatly cut down.

As already stated. President Houston's first term closed on the 10th December, 1838. He was succeeded by General Lamar.

President Lamar was possessed of high genius; he was of unspotted integrity; a chivalrous paladin of finished culture, of brilliant courage, of lofty daring, of pure patriotism. He was a soldier, and in other times and other circumstances he would have been a magnificent chieftain; his whole nature was poetical and military. But he was not a financier; he did not possess administrative capacity; he was not familiar with principles of political economy universally deemed incontrovertible. Reposing unbounded confidence in his friends, he lacked the sagacity often termed knowledge of human nature, knowledge of mankind. His administration of the Presidency was not a success.