APPENDIX No. II.

The following correspondence, published soon after the return of the author from Mexico, will speak for itself, and satisfy every one who will take the pains to examine it of the infamous agency President Houston had in the murder of our countrymen in Mexico:

To the People of Texas, - However unpleasant it may be to appear before you through the columns of a newspaper, it is a matter in which I have at present no choice. The President of your Republic on the one hand, and your countrymen now in chains, and the most odious slavery in Mexico on the other, are the parties at issue. I, more fortunate than they, favoured by an all-wise Providence, and an energy befitting the fearful task, with some few of my comrades, escaped through the walls of Perote some weeks since. A solemn duty I owe myself, my unfortunate fellow-prisoners, and my country, demands of me, with the evidences in my possession, to disabuse the public mind in what has been affirmed on one hand, and unblushingly denied by President Houston and his partisans on the other, to wit: "That he wrote, or caused to be written, to Mexico, by Captain Charles Elliott, her Britannic majesty's chargé d'affaires at Galveston, that the Mier prisoners had entered Mexico contrary to law and authority. "

Whatever may have been the ostensible pretext of General Houston's communication - and he pretends to ask mercy for his countrymen - yet his high authority that the Mier men had entered Mexico contrary to law and authority furnished the tyrant of that country all the legal pretex he could have desired in slaking his bloodthirsty vengeance upon the citizens of our country. It would, indeed, be an unjust denial of that personal and political acumen which General Houston's friends claim for [451] him, to say that he could not foresee the consequences of that communication. The murder of our twenty-seven countrymen at Tampico, of Colonel Fannin and his brave four hundred, of many of the Santa Fé prisoners, and a thousand other acts of savage cruelty inflicted upon us during this war by Mexico, all too plainly told General Houston that his asking "mercy for the Mier men" would not weigh a feather in the balance against Santa Anna's cold-blooded vindictiveness, after he (Houston) had in effect pronounced them brigands and marauders upon Mexico. One year previous to the battle of Mier the bloody tyrant had published a decree "that in future the war with Texas should be conducted upon the principles of civilized warfare," and the Mier men, under their articles of capitulation, were guaranteed in a full observance of this decree. It was necessary, then, before he could once more, in the face of these solemn guarantees and the civilized world, dip his hands in the blood of your countrymen, to have some legal pretext for so doing. General Houston furnished him that pretext, and the murder of the brave Cameron, Cocke, Dunham, Ogden, Eastland, Jones, and their comrades in death, is the consequence, and their blood is upon his head.

While myself and companions were incarcerated in the vilest dungeon in Mexico, and had no power of speaking upon this subject, General Houston and his partisans boldly denied the charge, and referred exultingly to the secretary of state's letter, published in June, to the Hon. Ashbel Smith, our minister in London. One word of this letter - wherefore put it off from the battle of Mier in December up to June? All the evils which it sought to remedy was of six months' standing. From the date of our inglorious surrender at Mier on the 26th of December, up to the middle of March, we had been treated with all the consideration which our articles of capitulation guarantied; then comes this "merciful" death-warrant of General Houston. Santa Anna forthwith orders General Mexier, Governor of Cohuilla, to shoot the whole of our prisoners in his charge, numbering one hundred and seventy odd. This brave soldier refused positively so to do; and three days after, the order, through the influence of the foreign ministers, was countermanded. Governor