and the President, I shall have to appear as his coadjutor in measures I disapprove toto cœlo; and, consequently, raise up for myself hundreds of enemies on this score, who while I live will not cease to persecute me.

MEMORANDUM BOOK No. 4.

From January, 1844, to the close of 1848.

[The Memoranda in this Book are principally private ones.] WASHINGTON ON THE BRAZOS, September 2d.-General election for President, and other officers of the Government. [Elected President of the Republic for three years.] [The inauguration took place, Monday, December 9th.] June 4th, 1845.-Wednesday, 4th, issued Proclamation of Peace with Mexico; same day received proposals of peace from the Comanche Chief, Santa Anna, the last enemy which Texas had-accepted them. Now, my country, for the first time in ten years, is actually at peace with ALL the world.

December 31st.-I very much fear I have given mortal offence to Gen. Houston, in having succeeded in my administration thus far. He will only omit to persecute and hate me, as he has so many others, on condition that I will let him appropriate all the credit of my acts as President to himself, as he is now endeavoring to do; and as he has already pretty successfully done, those I performed as Secretary of State. (V. vol. ii. pp. 267-8).

That Gen. H. preferred Gen. Burleson to me as his successor, is well known to me; and I suppose for the reason that he believed Gen. B. would break down, as L-r did, and leave Gen. H. a triumph, in enabling him to say, as he is so over-fond of doing, "There is nobody in Texas, after all, capable of gov erning the country, but old Sam." But I have prevented Gen. H. of this triumph, and of course may prepare for his vengeance. I have no objection to his taking as much of the credit as he pleases, if it will gratify his vanity or his ambition, so long as he makes a proper use of the capital so obtained, and appropriates it to the welfare of Texas; but if ever he fails to do this, I shall be obliged to vindicate the truth of history against him, as well as the ten thousand others who are inter

ested in perverting it. To make annexation sure, I have had to make great personal sacrifices, and probably no less than to be misunderstood and abused for the remainder of my life, though I trust truth will ultimately prevail, and posterity judge correctly; at all events, I shall be in a few years beyond the reach of injustice. I had a difficult task to perform, to secure success to this great measure, by exciting the rivalry and jealousy of the three greatest powers in the world, and at the same time so to act as to effect my object and maintain the perfect good faith of Texas towards all these powers. The people were, and are impatient; they have been ground down by years of adversity, poverty, and war; and they look to but one object-escape from the manifold evils of the past. They would not, perhaps, break the national faith wantonly, but it is a far-off consideration to them, compared with annexation. The cry has been, and is, Annexation at once, at any price, and at any sacrifice. But I have been unwilling to break the national faith in order to gratify this unfortunate impatience. Like "Curtius," I have had no alternative but to leap into the gulf, and by the sacrifice of all political hope, and all just contemporary approbation, to save that most inestimable jewel, the National Faith and (with it her) Honor!

MEMORANDUM BOOK NO. 5, (FOLIO,)

From January, 1849, to July, 1850.-(144 pp.)

BARRINGTON, November 14th.-From 1836 to 1846, I continued to serve the country, with slight exceptions, in various capacities, as Soldier, Representative, Minister, Senator, Secretary of State and President; my salary in the latter station for fourteen months was the only one which served to cover actual personal expenses. Still the Legislature of Texas (1st) in voting down a proposition of Thanks, indirectly thereby passed a vote of Censure; and the Government at Washington City through its organ, the Union, denounced me as a traitor." So much for contemporary justice; and so much for having saved General Houston's second administration from the errors, the follies, and the wide-spread ruin of the first, and for having subsequently obtained for my adopted country peace, prosperity, independence, and annexation!

66

December 13th.-The following extract of a letter from Hamilton Stuart, Esq., Editor of the Civilian at Galveston, dated November 20th, 1847, expresses the opinion of a disinterested person upon some of my official acts. "Your letters for publication," (alluding to my letters in reply to Ex-President Tyler,)" and private note reached me yesterday. The former will be cheerfully awarded a place in our columns. The latter was welcome and gratifying. I am glad to see you emerge so far, both politically and personally, from the seclusion you appear to have courted since your retirement from a long and successful public career-traduced, but triumphant-resting from your labors now completed, and with little prospect that you or any other man in Texas will ever be again called upon to discharge duties so difficult, so responsible, and so important to the State, or so far affecting the Union, the whole of North America, and the leading powers of Europe. The events you write of belong to the History of the Age, and I am glad you have come forward to vindicate the integrity of that history which so many are interested in perverting." *

*

January 2d.-In communicating to the public, as I did in the fall of 1848, Gen. Houston's official order to me as Secretary of State, to close with the proposition of England and France, (of 24th September, '44,) I was actuated by a sense of duty to the people of Texas. I was alarmed at his course when that order was given, and resolved either to avoid a compliance with it or resign. Vested, as I was, with the actual discharge. of the Executive functions from that date to the end of his term, and already elected his successor in the office, I felt at liberty to disobey the order, and I did so; although it had previously been communicated verbally to me several times, by Gen. H-n, to whom I had, again, in consequence tendered my resignation. I also resolved to keep the order a secret, so far as the public generally was concerned, and only showed it in confidence to some few persons. But when he joined the "free soil party," in his vote with Mr. Benton on the Oregon Bill, I became satisfied of his unfaithfulness to Texas, and felt no longer at liberty to withhold from the people so important a fact with respect to his course on the subject of annexation; I therefore published it with a short letter from myself in the

Western Texian. Anxious as Capt. Elliot was to defeat annexation, even he would have been unwilling to have seen it defeated at such a risk to the peace and harmony of the powers concerned; for, when I showed him the order of 24th September 1844, he exclaimed, "Thank God! that you have disobeyed it, for I tremble to think of the consequences which otherwise would have resulted. War! between the United States, on the one side, and Great Britain and France on the other, would inevitably have resulted from a compliance on your part with that order." Such also was the opinion of others, and of myself—an event at the time (war) I looked upon as the greatest possible disaster which could have happened to the cause of humanity, civilization, and to civil and religious liberty throughout the world. His friends have charged me with ingratitude towards him in publishing that order, but the charge is wholly false, for I ought to have published it before I did. It was public property, and I had no right to withhold it. Besides, I was under no obligations to him, I never asked or received a favor from him. The obligations which did exist, were of a reciprocal character, and bound neither to do what was wrong, or omit any public duty. **(The proof of all this follows in the original memorandum.)

Had I have been as well satisfied of his treachery to Texas in 1844, as I was in 1848, and am now, I should not have withheld a knowledge of his course in the matter of annexation from the public a single day after I came into the Executive chair, or at least not a single day after the measure was consummated and out of danger of all contingencies. ** * (the rest omitted.) V. Waco, 10th No. "Ranger."

*

February 1st. * *The annexation of Texas is an event the resulting consequences of which are too vast to be yet realized or calculated. Of this measure I was the Architect. **

I saved it subsequently from the destructive violence of some potent enemies; as well as of its best friends in the United States and Texas, who, like the boys in chase of the butterfly, would have crushed it in their imprudent and impatient grasp. The exciting and balancing, of the constantly acting and re-acting rival influences of England, France, Mexico, and the United States, and converging them all to the one

point, with the view, and for the purpose of effecting my object, was a labor, in which for five years I did not give "sleep to my eyes, or slumber to my eyelids," and in which I was finally successful.

In 1836, '7, '8 and '9, the tables of the United States Congress were loaded with petitions and remonstrances against the admission of Texas and against slavery; nor did the feeling of opposition to the measure abate, to a degree which appeared to afford any hope for its accomplishment, until England and France were brought to bear upon the morbid jealousy and sensibility of the American people, and their leading statesmen. Among these last was Gen. Andrew Jackson, (v. p. 79.) His hatred, jealousy, and fear of the grasping power of England, particularly, was always proverbial, and in the latter years of his life became a kind of monomania. Of the feelings on the part of this very influential statesman every proper use was made which was possible; and so of many others. In 1839, 40, 41, '42, and '43, however, had any one spoken of annexation as a measure likely to be accomplished, (in 1845-6,) he would have been regarded as a madman. Nothing during this period appeared more improbable, no political proposition more absurd. Still, in the first of those years, (1839,) I had begun to turn my attention to that train of measures, and course of policy, by which I ultimately succeeded. I addressed in April, 1839, through the agency of Hon. C. Hughes, American Chargé at Stockholm and the oldest American Diplomate in Europe, a memorial to Lord Palmerston, H. B. M. Secretary of State, on the subject of the prospective importance of Texas in an agricultural point of view, and pointing out the way in which she might be useful and serviceable to the commercial and manufacturing interests of Great Britain. To this I subsequently received a reply through the same channel, from his Lordship, saying, the subject was one of importance, and should receive due attention from him. This was among the first in the series of those acts, among the first trembling steps in that course of policy, which seven years after resulted in the annexation of Texas to the United States. C. Hughes was an efficient friend of Texas, now dead, and history will not do justice to his memory, if it do not give him his share of merit in an