Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/236

 ability and with unsuspected integrity. In all positions, the most responsible as well as the most trying and perilous, he has been eminently successful. He has ever proved himself equal to any emergency in which he has been placed. As General, statesman, orator, and legislator, he has displayed talents and ability of the first order. He is a man of honor. He keeps faith with the humblest as well as the highest. He has never broken his word with the humblest Indian with whom he has had to deal, nor with sovereign States. He believes in the sacredness of treaties, of compacts, and of compromises, whether in the form of conventions, constitutions, or solemn acts of Congress. He preserves his faith with the North, as he would require the North to preserve its faith with the South. Under his administration, the rights of all sections of the Union would be protected and preserved. He is a Union man, and never would permit this glorious confederacy of sovereign States to be dissevered by the aggressions of fanaticism on the one side, nor by unjustifiable rebellion on the other. He would secure justice to the States and to the people."

This address, appearing a few weeks before the meeting of the second session of the Thirty-third Congress, naturally called forth the bitter opposition of the men whose selfish ambition, which had nearly brought ruin on Texas, had been thwarted by the hero and patriot who had made Texas the type of nobleness in her independence; and thus, too, had made its moulder the hope of the times in which he was then moving, as events showed! The "Life of Sam Houston," which shortly after appeared, was rendered necessary by false publications, which he was too high-minded to stoop to contradict; that Life justifying the writer's announcement on the title-page—"The only authentic memoir of him ever published."

It is sufficient here to state, that all those false publications originated from two sources. First, the narrow men, who from the day of Houston's grand victory at San Jacinto, which made him the recognized head among both the Northern and Southern settlers of Texas, because he alone had the united impartiality and justice to appreciate both, and the skill and heroism to harmonize the two elements, were eaten up with the gangrene of envy. Second, the determined disunionists of the Gulf States, few in number, and only found in those States, irritated by jealousy, were ready to use any means to drive from the path of their selfish ambition the man who, more than all others united, blocked their way to the accomplishment of their ends. The former class sought in offensive publications to disaffect the people of the South, who confided in Houston's integrity and wisdom. The latter class soon met him in debate in the Senate. Still others, in published manifestoes, arraigned his motives, declaring them to be inspired by personal ambition to secure the Presidency rather than by genuine regard to the welfare of the people of the entire country. With this call of the New Hampshire Democracy before the country, and with this "Life of