Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/366

 of popularity at home, and which you have submitted to the world as a manifesto in behalf of what you are pleased to term the rights of a great nation, "by so many titles respectable."

Whatever opinions you may have entertained in relation to the difficulties existing between Mexico and Texas can not materially vary the facts and principles involved, nor will they materially influence the decision of mankind upon the justice of oar cause.

Decency and self-respect, at least, should have induced, on your part, the pursuit of a course different from that which you have adopted. The abuse and ribald epithets which you have applied to the citizens oi this country, as well as those of the Mississippi valley of the United States, are doubtless characteristic of the individual who gave them utterance. So far as the people of this country are concerned, I shall refer mankind to a history of facts and circumstances connected with the settlement of the country. I shall pass by with slight notice your remarks relative to the people of the United States, So far as our origin is connected with them, and the unity of sympathy exists, we are proud to hail them as our kindred—kindred in blood, kindred in laws, kindred in all the ennobling attributes of humanity. They will hear your taunts of defiance with the same contempt and derision that Texans regard your silly gasconade. If they have heretofore sympathized with us in our struggle for liberty and independence, it was from a knowledge of the fact that we had been deceived and oppressed by Mexico, and that the cause in which we were engaged was that of humanity struggling against usurpation and despotism.

The people of Texas were invited to migrate to this country for the purpose of enjoying equal rights and constitutional liberty. They were promised the shield of the Constitution of 1824, adopted by Mexico. Confiding in this pledge, they removed to the country to encounter all the privations of a wilderness, under the alluring promises of free institutions. Other reasons operated also. Citizens of the United States had engaged in the revolution of Mexico, in 1812. They, fought gallantly in the achievement of Mexican independence, and many of them survive, and to this day occupy the soil which their privations and valor assisted in achieving. On their removal here, they brought with them no aspirations or projects but such as were loyal to the Constitution of Mexico. They repelled the Indian savages; they encountered every discomfort; they subdued the wilderness, and converted into cultivated fields the idle waste of this now prolific territory. Their courage and enterprise achieved that which the imbecility of j^our countrymen had either neglected, or left for centuries unaccomplished. Their situation, however, was not disregarded by Mexico, though she did not, as might have been expected, extend to them a protecting and fostering care, but viewed them as objects of cupidity, rapacity, and at last jealousy.

The Texans, enduring the annoyances and oppressions inflicted upon them, remained faithful to the Constitution of Mexico. In 1832, when an attempt was made to destroy that Constitution, and when you, sir, threw yourself forward as its avowed champion, you were sustained with all the fidelity and valor that freemen could contribute. On the avowal of your principles, and in accordance with them, the people put down the serviles of