Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/191



fortunes of Jackson and Houston were reunited on entering Congress. Houston had been elected a Representative from Tennessee, September 13, 1823, by the people of the Ninth District; and Jackson had been elected by the Legislature of Tennessee on the 25th October following, amid all the excitement that followed his act in June previous in pursuing the Seminoles into Florida, and hanging at St. Augustine two English abettors of their barbarities in Georgia. Jackson was immediately made chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the Senate; while Houston, his former favorite lieutenant, was on the 5th December made a member of the same committee in the House. The session opened with exciting issues before it, and while Jackson, not gifted as a speaker, was firm in action, Houston was for full two years studying the situation and shaping his course on varied issues as experience should dictate. On the 12th December Mr. Hayne in the Senate offered a resolution providing for a new election and a future change of the Constitution as to its provisions for the election of President and Vice-President; and on the 22d December Mr. McDuffie in the House moved the same, thus indicating the sentiment of South Carolina on this issue. Houston's first recorded vote was in the case of a contested election, where an error in the count was claimed. On the i6th January, 1824, the question of preemption by settlers on lands west of the Mississippi was up for debate. On the 19th January, Jackson, from the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, introduced a resolution for payment of losses of horses and private property, met by volunteers in the Seminole war; the views of Jackson and Houston leading to the immediate passage of the resolution. On the 19th of January, again, Webster in the House introduced his resolution to send an agent to Greece, then struggling to gain independence; on the same day Mr. Mitchell moved an invitation to the Marquis de Lafayette to a reception by the House; and on the same day Clay brought in a bill providing for resistance to the interposition of Spain to recover her lost Mexican possessions. The able, earnest antagonistic views, brought out by this array of questions, stimulated thought and compelled