A new history of Texas for schools : also for general reading and for teachers preparing themselves for examination Page: 209 of 412

                                
ERA OF REVOLUTION.

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be made to give way to the suggestions of interest, or any cold con-
sideration of policy. He who sacrifices human life at the shrine of
ambition is a murderer, and deserves the punishment and infamy of
one; the higher the offender, the greater the reason for its infliction. I
am, therefore, of the opinion that our prisoner, General Santa Anna,
has forfeited his life by the highest of all crimes, and is not a suit-
able object for the exercise of our pardoning prerogative."
(9.)  Extract from   the address of Hon. Ashbel Smith
to the Veteran Association:
"The battle of San Jacinto was fought. It was one of the de-
cisive battles of the world. Battles are not important from the num-
bers engaged in the shock, or the dead that strew the field. The battle
of San Jacinto redeemed a territory of
imperial extent, and consecrated it to
liberty. And then, look at the vast re-
gions, California and other new States,
whose acquisition into the American
Union grew out of the independence of
Texas, achieved at San Jacinto. Iad the
campaign which was crowned so glori-      <      :I
ously on the battlefield of San Jacinto
closed with victory to the Mexicans and
in their ultimate success, the vast terri-
tories of more than a million square miles
in extent, now constituting the great
States of California and Texas, and the
SIDNEY SHEIIRMAN.
great States intervening, forming the
south-western border of the American Union,-these vast territories,
I say, would have still remained a useless wilderness, under Mexico,
cursed with the same dead palsy in which they had lain for more
than two centuries. Veterans, the victory of you and yours at San
Jacinto -was of vast and inappreciable consequences--it was no slen-
der, no stinted dower which Texas brought into the Union. But it
is not my purpose to dwell upon this topic, but to view the great