Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/557

Rh federal court, adopting the acts of this smart agent, participating in the low swindling of bar-room vagabonds, and through the letters of his agent, communing with himself, and congratulating himself on the fruits of the lowest and most debased exploits of fraud.

It must be recollected, too, that this commerce in land certificates, openly treated of between Judge Watrous and his agent, was in violation of a law, of a highly penal character, punishing the offender with the infamy and pain of thirty-nine public stripes on the bare back.

Here also is another letter, which I will read, from the same William G. Hale to O. F. Johnson, directly indicating Judge Watrous' active connection with the suits referred to, and with the procurement of fraudulent land certificates: ", July 5, 1847.

" My Dear Sir : — Colonel , Judge Watrous, and myself, received the 'legal papers' and your letter. Judge Norton happened, by the merest good fortune, to be here at the time, and Trueheart also; so the whole matter was arranged here and by a trip to Houston.

"We altered the petitions materially, owing to many reasons which have sprung up since you left. Judge Watrous will explain them to you at length. All the papers were sent to San Antonio by Colonel Wilson, a partner of Trueheart, who pledged himself to have them filed by the 20th of last month. That directions should be sent from New York on the first of June, and in a matter of such difficulty, and be executed in San Antonio on the 25th, is one of those lucky chances which rarely happen.

"I have received several letters from the trustees of the Peters Association, and have written to them explaining some matters. What arrangement did you make with them as to fees; and will they advance anything? "Our other matters remain in statu quo. The Stafford cases have given us much trouble, but we shall get out the attachments in a few days. We may, however, have to promise the sheriff, as an incentive, the $175 which, as you wrote us, the banks agree to advance for expenses.

"Judge Toler is quite anxious about the 'Grant claims.' The papers in Holman's hands I hope you will be able to procure. The original certificates of the grant, ninety-seven in number, have been just found among Judge W.'s papers. Toler said he would be at the North this summer. A. Allen has already gone on. I suppose you have seen him. He will give you some trouble in arranging this matter.

"Judge Watrous will be in New York about the first of August. He has been detained here by business.

" Very truly yours, " The papers referred to in the above letter, as sent to San Antonio, by Colonel Wilson, were fraudulent land certificates, exceeding one million acres, besides an indefinite number which Hale, in his instructions to Wilson, designates as "No. 2"; a list of those in the hands of Miner, the agent referred to in the letter from Hale to Watrous, as dealing with bar-room vagabonds, and cheating them for the benefit of his principal.

I may here introduce another letter from Hale to Johnson, showing the prosecution of the designs of the conspirators, as dealing in these fraudulent