Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/415

 Texas, and the advantage of her creditors? That would be a very agreeable one to the creditors, but I can not see that it would be complimentary either to the heart or the head of Texas. I do not think there is anything smart in it. It may be smart for the creditors, but certainly most stupid for Texas. They are for fixing their standard of morality for Texas, and she is for fixing her standard of equity and justice for them; and the United States have no business at all with it one way or the other.

If, however, the United States are bound for the debts of Texas, they are bound for much more than this bill proposes to pay. The independence of Texas was not recognized by Mexico when it was annexed to the United States. The domestic debt of Mexico was then about a hundred millions of dollars. They claimed that Texas should pay a part of it. Propositions were even suggested before annexation, that if Texas would assume her proportion of the national debt of Mexico, the independence of Texas might be acknowledged. If the United States are now bound by the act of annexation for ihe debts of Texas to the extent that the means taken by the United States would have gone, the debt to the Government of Mexico is a prior one, and the United States are bound to Mexico for a much larger sum than they are bound to these creditors. Would you be willing to go back and settle that amount? Yet it has a priority over the present demand. Mexico never recognized the debts that Texas incurred by her revolution, and if you recognize that you are bound to pay them, you should also pay to Mexico the proper proportion of Texas to the one hundred millions of the domestic debt of Mexico.

It is true, the Government of the United States might justly bear a part of the liabilities incurred on the part of Texas, because a portion of the debt of Texas was entered into for the purpose of defending her frontiers against the Indians. What Indians were these? Were they indigenous to Texas? No, sir. Who were they? The Shawnees, the Kickapoos, the Choctaws, the Anadacoes, the Kechies, Wacoes, Caddoes, and other Indian tribes from the limits of the United States, who settled in Mexico, and made war upon Texas. It was therefore necessary for Texas to defend a frontier of six hundred or eight hundred miles against the inroads of these Indians. The Government of the United States was solemnly bound by treaty with Mexico to defend Texas against the Indians, to reclaim them to the territory of the United States, and to inhibit their crossing the frontier. Instead of that, what did the United States do? I intend no reflection upon them, but I intend to vindicate Texas, now a part of the United States, but then a part of Mexico. The United States had solemnly pledged their faith, by treaty, to give protection to the boundary of Mexico; but instead of that, they treated with the Caddoes and acquired their territory, forced them into the boundary of Texas, and paid them in arms, in munitions of war, in powder, in implements of slaughter and massacre, and those Indians drenched our frontier in blood. Weak as we were—pressed upon by Mexico on the one hand, and the wily and sagacious Indian on the other hand, watching his opportunity to maraud upon our frontiers and slaughter our men, butcher our women, massacre our children, and conflagrate the humble hamlets in which they had dwelt in peace, we incurred expenses to keep them off, and for this the United States are responsible, as they are for a hundred other violated pledges in relation to Indians.

But what is the real history of this matte? When the scaling of the debt of