To Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Richard M. Johnson, John Forsyth, Lewis Cass, T. H. Benton, and to any member of the Cabinet or Congress of all parties and all factions of the United States.

New York April 15th. 1836.

Pardon me this intrusion upon your valued time. I address you as Individuals, as men, as Americans, as my countrymen. I obey an honest though an excited impulse.

We have recent dates from Mexico by the Packet. It Appears that Santana has succeeded in uniting the whole of the Mexicans against Texas by making it a national war against heretics: that an additional army of 8000 men is organizing in Mexico under Gen. Cortazar to march to Texas and exterminate the heretic Americans. Santana is now in Texas, as we all know, with about 7000 men fighting under the bloody flag of a Pirate— he is exciting the Comanches and other Indians, who know nothing of laws or political divisions of territory, and massacres have been committed on Red River within the U.S. This is a war of barbarism against civilization, of despotism against liberty, of Mexicans against Americans. Oh my countrymen! the warm hearted chivalrous impulsive West and South are up and moving in favor of Texas. The calculating and more prudent tho' not less noble minded North are aroused. The Sympathies of the whole American people in mass are with the Texians. This people look to you the guardians of their rights and interests and principles. Will you, can you turn a deaf ear to the appeals of your fellow citizens in favor of your and their countrymen and friends who are massacred, butchered, outraged in Texas at your very doors? Are not we, the Texians obeying the dictates of an education received here: from you the American people, from our fathers, from the patriots of 76— the Republicans of 1836? Have we not been stimulated to obey the dictates of this noble education by the expression of opinions all over the United States and by all parties that we ought to resist and throw off the yoke of Mexican usurpation, and are we now to be abandoned or suffered to struggle alone and single handed, because the cold calculations of policy or of party have had to be consulted?

Well, you reply—what can we do? In answer I say, let the President and Cabinet and Congress come out openly and at once and proclaim to the public their opinions—let Texas have some of the $37,000,000 now in the national treasury—let the war in Texas become a National war, above board, and thus respond to the noble feelings of the American people— Who can deny that it is a national war in reality—a war in which every free American who is not a fanatic, abolitionist, or cold hearted recreant to the interest and honor and principles of his country and countrymen, who is not an icicle in soul and in practice, is deeply, warmly ardently interested. In short, it is now a national war subrosa This will not do; This state of the matter cannot, ought not to continue— make it at once and above board, what it is in fact, a national war in defence of national rights interests and principles and of Americans. Let the Administration and congress take this position at once, and the butcheries in Texas will cease, humanity will no longer be outraged by a war of extermination against liberty and against Americans— peace will be restored and maintained on the South West frontiers of this nation, and the Government of the U.S. will then occupy that open and elevated place which is due to the American people and worthy of Andrew Jackson—for it will occupy above board the position which this nation as a people now occupy in the heart and in feeling and in wishes; a position which they are now defending in obedience to the noblest impulses of the heart, by acts and with their blood, as warm hearts noble spirits always do.

Respectfully your native countryman and obedt Sert.

S. F Austin of Texas