Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/573

 The order of transfer from Austin appears to have been entered at the November term, 1854. The transcript was taken by Robert Hughes, with Hewitson's deposition, which was sent him en route to New Orleans, where the cases appear to have been filed in April, 1855. When the docket was called there, it appears that Hughes was anxious to have the cases disposed of with dispatch, and to take advantage of the supposed absence, at that time, of a defense. But in this he was disappointed by the sudden apparition in court of a poor settler, who had traveled all the way from the wilderness, over hundreds of weary and painful miles, to confront the artful despoiler of his home and to demand justice. I will let the poor man, Eliphas Spencer, tell his story of what transpired in the court at New Orleans, as it is related in the printed evidence taken by the committee of the House in the Watrous investigation. He says: "I think he [Hughes] said he would like to have them [the suits] tried at as early a day as would be convenient to the court, for he thought there would be no defense, and they could not take up much of the time of the court in trying them. After that I got up and said that I had come some six hundred miles to defend my land, and I wished that time should be given me to prepare my evidence, etc. Judge Hughes observed, 'Oh, Mr. Spencer, I did not know that you were in court, or any one, to attend to the suits.' "

In confirmation of this statement of Spencer of the advantage attempted to be taken against him, there is found an admission of Hughes himself, made in a letter to Lapsley, written when he was in attendance on the cases in New Orleans, April, 1853: "I will press the cases to trial with the utmost rigor. I do not expect there will be any counsel here for the defendants."

There is something here of almost pathetic interest to claim the earnest attention of this honorable body. This poor settler, it appears, had planted a home as early as 1847, on what was then the extreme frontier of Texas, and had lived through hardships and dangers difficult to depict, until at last he had secured, as he fondly imagined, a permanent resting-place for his life, and had commenced to gather the fruits of his toils and privations to sustain his wife and children. This land was included in the La Vega tract, and he was the principal defendant, representing in the business the other settlers who had planted themselves around him. He was sued in every shape, and it would seem that every ingenuity of his opponents was taxed to betray him. It appears from the evidence that the suit instituted against him at Galveston was removed to Austin, without any order of transfer having been made in the case; that he had no lawyer employed to attend to it at Austin, and that when all the cases were removed to New Orleans and the transcript carried there, he heard for the first time, and then, too, not from those who were prosecuting and attempting to betray him, of Judge Watrous' long-concealed interest in the suits, and their removal, on that account, to New Orleans. No sooner is he made aware of this—no sooner does he perceive the long-matured conspiracy to keep him in ignorance and to betray him and his co-suitors—than the poor intended victim is suddenly aroused, hurries to New Orleans, six hundred miles away, and confronts in the court-room the confederate of Judge Watrous, for his ruin,