Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/566

 "court of New Orleans, are considered, together with the judgment rendered in it, upon the verdict of a jury, and the evidence in the contempt case, that there was no foundation whatever for the proceeding against him for a contempt, and that the action of the judge with respect to it was unauthorized by law, and was intended to be vexatious and oppressive. How any other conclusion can be arrived at, when it is remembered that the suit in New Orleans was instituted by Mussina against his codefendants alone and their counsel, and related to rights growing out of their own transactions, it is not easy to conceive.'"

The defendant appealed from the judgment of the New Orleans court in favor of Mussina. In 1855, the case was heard on appeal, in the supreme court of the State of Louisiana, and was dismissed on a question of jurisdiction in the court. It was during the hearing of this appeal that Judge Watrous was at New Orleans, under the assumed name of "John Jones," and lodging secretly at the Verandah Hotel.

In order to continue understandingly the history, the narration of which I have undertaken, it is necessary here to make a momentary review of the positions occupied by the man Reynolds, who, it has been shown, was a prominent actor in the eventful drama of the conspiracy, so far as it appears to have progressed. It has been shown that he was one of the chief and choicest spirits in the inception of the New York company. It has been shown from the correspondence relative to the action of the court at New Orleans, that he had made the clerk of the court interested in the suit. It has been shown undc^r what circumstances he established a bogus bank on the Cavazos grant. It has been shown that he was appointed by Judge Watrous, and acted as commissioner to take testimony in the Cavazos case, on the side of the defense, to defeat which, by collusion, was the evident purpose of the company of whom and in whose service he was.

Thus we find this man Reynolds connected and intermixed with all that takes place through Judge Watrous' court, in the progress of the conspiracy in which both were so deeply and so criminally interested and implicated.

I now present him as attempting to seize the "Great Salt Lake of Texas," the immense value of which and its location I have referred to. This lake was a reservation of the Government of Texas, and the only possible means of appropriating this valuable property was by influencing the courts and the Legislature.

It is shown by the letter of Mr. Joseph L. Williams, which I have read in another part of this case, and by the order of transfer, to which I shall presently refer, that the three, Reynolds, Williams, and Watrous, at least, were interested in this fraudulent adventure.

They had already been successful in the Phalen suits, at New Orleans (wherein their fraudulent certificates were declared valid); and, in the flush of their entire success in this matter, they were emboldened to extend their grasp, and to attempt to take by adventure every prize that their avarice could discover.

This suit is instituted in Judge Watrous' court, on the 14th of May, 1849. it appears that the case remained there from the 14th of May, 1849, to the 7th June, 1850. It is then transferred to New Orleans; and it is especially to be remembered that the application for the transfer in this case, as well as the transfer in the Phalen case, was made by the plaintiff himself—Mr. James N. Reynolds. I will here give an extract from the order of transfer: