The government will claim no portion of the spoils: they will be divided among the victors. The flag of Texas will accompany the expedition."

From this it will be perceived that the government was guarded against incurring any pecuniary responsibilities on account of the campaign. For this reason, they were authorized to cross the Rio Grande, "and make such reprisals upon Mexico as civilized and honourable warfare would justify in the relations then existing with the common enemy." The Executive knew full well at that period, as he does now, that the means of the country could not sustain the expense of the expedition, and hence he based his call to the citizen soldiers of the Republic upon what he believed to be their patriotic desire and readiness to engage in the undertaking; and because he knew the inability of the country to pay them for their services, he plainly told them they must look "for remuneration to the Valley of the Rio Grande."

...It is just that all should be regarded on the same footing, and the claims of no one preferred to those of all the rest. The widows and orphans of the brave and unfortunate decimated have not petitioned Congress for pay or relief, &c.

Thus, in one short year, in subserving this vindictive hatred of one individual, he furnishes the world from under his own hand the evidences of his guilt; and, notwithstanding the many falsehoods which he asserted, and some of his partisans reiterated about his desire to serve our suffering fellow-citizens in the Mexican prisons, we absolutely see them released, without any influence or agency of his, at a distance of more than a thousand miles from their homes, with ONE DOLLAR each, which the charity of the "magnanimous nation" gave them to bear their expenses. We see them turned loose upon the levée of New-Orleans in the greatest possible destitution, covered with filth and rags, and sustained by the charity of the good people of that city; and thus we see them begging their way back to Texas, with one proud feeling still uppermost in their bosoms - to die for the honour and liberty of that country whose executive chief had slandered them all - had murdered some - had starved by piecemeal [480] many, and basely insulted the remainder when in chains! What a moral reflection this for Mexico, and how hopeless, should it prove, is her vain hope of reconquering such a people!

In the face of the foregoing facts, President Houston has had the shameless hardihood, in his last annual message to the Ninth Congress, dated December 4th, 1844, to say, that "the laws of the last Congress touching our prisoners in Mexico were carried out as fully and as speedily as circumstances would permit."