Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/251

Rh Clark. This was the last act having any official significance which General Sam Houston ever performed. He quietly retired with his family to his home at Huntsville, and remained a passive spectator of passing events. The following letter, addressed to Col. Waite, of the United States Army, San Antonio, Texas, will explain itself:

", March 29, 1861.

":—I have received intelligence that you have received, or will soon receive, orders to concentrate United States troops under your command at Indianola, in this State, to sustain me in the exercise of my official functions. Allow me most respectfully to decline any such assistance from the United States Government, and to most earnestly protest against the concentration of troops or fortifications in Texas, and request that you remove all such troops out of this State at the earliest day practicable, or, at any rate, by all means take no action toward a hostile movement till further ordered by the Government at Washington city, or particularly of Texas. "Thine,"

Gen. Houston loved the Union. He did not believe the "Confederate States " could maintain their independence, and yet he allowed his oldest son to enter the Confederate army. The successes of the Confederate arms up to April, 1863, rather inclined him to believe that under Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and a favoring Divine Providence the Confederacy might live, although opposed to his convictions.