Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/228

 appointments and appropriations for the Indians. On a report made to the Senate, June 9, 1852, as to an incompetent Indian agent, Houston stated:

"These men are not accustomed to meet Indians. Texas, when independent, expended only $10,000 annually, and had peace. Now the United States expends $6,000,000 annually on the same border, and there is no protection. I am not saying anything against President Fillmore, for whom I entertain the respect that I hope ever to show toward the Chief Magistrate of this country."

He added afterward:

"The President of the United States, in his relation to the Indians, is the only father we have ever heard of on this continent. So far as the President of Texas was concerned, he was a brother to the Indians."

On the 12th August, when the appropriation made to the Indians was discussed, Houston showed that by withholding $84,000 from the Comanches, the U. S. Government had been led to a war which cost $48,000,000. "Sir," he exclaimed, "until we do justice to the Indians, until we are truthful and righteous in our legislation in regard to them, we can expect nothing but that Heaven will cause retributive justice to fall, if not upon the offenders, upon the nation that despoils the poor Indians. Be truthful, be just, and they will honor our flag; and indeed, defend it."

This long and eventful session of Congress, like the two sessions of the previous Congress, owed much of its success to the heroic and patriotic course of Houston. During the month of August, Charles Sumner uttered the first of his "Philippics," so called because in style and manner they were studiously conformed to the rhetoric of Demosthenes' celebrated appeals against Philip, and of Cicero's rebukes against Cataline; as the very framing of the sentences of this anti-slavery leader revealed. The oration of this session, entitled "Slavery Sectional, Freedom National," designed, as it was, to insist upon theoretical principle rather than to urge any practical matter of legislation, was allowed by Houston to pass without notice. A single remark dropped August 27th, on a bill to give the public printing to Mr. Richie, former editor of the Richmond Enquirer, but then editor of a Democratic organ at Washington, indicated the freedom from partisan as opposed to public interest, which ruled Houston's entire course. He remarked, in supporting the resolution, "I would as soon vote, as for years I have, to give the public printing to Gales & Seaton, who have opposed me in politics, as I would vote for the present resolution, offered in behalf of a gentleman of my own party."

The intelligent and general respect shown for Houston's judgment on questions of international as well as constitutional law,