Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/367

 despotism at Anahuac, Velasco, and Nacogdoches. They treated the captives of that struggle with humanity, and sent them to Mexico subject to your orders. They regarded you as the friend of liberty and free institutions; they hailed you as a benefactor of mankind; your name and your actions were lauded, and the manifestations you had given in behalf of the nation were themes of satisfaction and delight to the Texan patriots.

You can well imagine the transition of feeling which ensued on your accession to power. Your subversion of the Constitution of 1824, your establishment of centralism, your conquest of Zacatecas, characterized by every act of violence, cruelty, and rapine, inflicted upon us the profoundest astonishment. We realized all the uncertainty of men awakening to reality from the unconsciousness of delirium. In succession came your orders for the Texans to surrender their private arms. The mask was thrown aside and the monster of despotism displayed in all the habiliments of loathsome detestation. Then was presented to Texans the alternative of tamely crouching to the tyrant's lash, or exalting themselves to the attributes of freemen. They chose the latter. To chastise them for their presumption induced your advance upon Texas, with your boasted veteran army, mustering a force nearly equal to the whole population of this country at that time. You besieged and took the Alamo; but under what circumstances? Not those, surely, which should characterize a general of the nineteenth century. You assailed one hundred and fifty men, destitute of every supply requisite for the defense of that place. Its brave defenders, worn by vigilance and duty beyond the power of human nature to sustain, were at length overwhelmed by a force of nine thousand men, and the place taken. I ask you, sir, what scenes followed? Were they such as should characterize an able general, a magnanimous warrior, and the President of a great nation numbering eight millions of souls?' No. Manliness and generosity would sicken at the recital of the scenes incident to your success, and humanity itself would blush to class you among the chivalric spirits of the age of vandalism. This you have been pleased to class in the "succession of your victories"; and I presume you would next include the massacre at Goliad.

Your triumph there, if such you are pleased to term it, was not the triumph of arms— it was the success of perfidy. Fannin and his brave companions had beaten back and defied your veteran soldiers. Although outnumbered more than seven to one, their valiant, hearty, and indomitable courage, with holy devotion to the cause of freedom, foiled every effort directed by your general to insure his success by arms. He had recourse to a flag of truce; and when the surrender of the little patriot band was secured by the most solemn treaty stipulations, what were the tragic scenes that ensued to Mexican perfidy? The conditions of the surrender were submitted to you; and, though you have denied the facts, instead of restoring them to liberty, according to the capitulation, you ordered them to be executed contrary to every pledge given them, contrary to the rules of war, and contrary to every principle of humanity. Yet at this day, you have the effrontery to animadvert upon the conduct of Texans relative to your captivity after the battle of San Jacinto.

You have presumed to arraign: he conduct of the then existng Cabinet,