Colombia Oct. 12. 1836
S. M. Williams.
yours of 29 Augt, recd/ at Mr Perrys on the 1st instant. I was then just
able to sit up from an attack of fever and am now barely able to crawl
about a little— I read your letter with such feelings as a drowning man
would seize a plank— Sam Williams you were wound around and rooted
in my affections more than any man ever was or ever can be again— I
wished, and hoped to see or hear something that would convince me I was
wrong or had too seriously viewed your acts etc since I left in 1833. you
were to have closed the land business pending of the old colonies and
attended to the last one—nothing was done or next to nothing, and I still
have all that cursed trouble on my hands besides the censure and Gabble
of discontent, which is of little consequence it is true but is not very
pleasant— But all this is nothing, those cursed Monclova speculations and
Contracts by which you have involved yourself and friends and country in
evils which will last for years, and which you certainly never even drempt
of and know nothing of now— W. H. Jack was the man who gave me the
first account of that damn.d transaction that I understood. That an attempt
was made by you to get up an excitement in the Colony and to draw men
from here under the pretext of defending the Governor, when in reality they
were to be used as a part of the pay you and others were to be given on one
of those contracts— I was led and bound to believe by Jack's statement;
and also that you spared no kind of pains to precipitate the country into
war immediately, an event which you must have known would have
perpetuated my imprisonment indefinitely— you also must have known that
all the odium of those things, would be cast on me by the envious and
slanderous owing to our long friendship and relations. The fact is Williams
that all those Monclova matters, I mean the speculations, and precipitating
the country into war, were morally wrong, they have some very criminal
and dreadfull features— I am too much debilitated to say more you say
your motives were good— In the name of God convince me of that—
Had I cared nothing about you and McKinney these things would have had
no effect on me— McKinney began abusing and slandering me when I was
absent in the U. S. his idea of friendship is that one must be the tool of
his friend right or wrong— he has chosen his course and is quite welcome
to keep it— he is very far from being the high minded man I once
believed him to be— But you will probably get on well— Speculation and
honesty cannot contend in Texas the former will gain some twenty or
100 to one. What I mean by honesty here is honesty to the public interest
and the public good— Convince me in the name of God that you have
been and are honest to the public interest and the public good as you say
you have been and restore yourself where you once stood in the opinion of
S. F. Austin
It seems that Jack and Warren Hall are about commencing a sistem of
persecution against me on some pretext of a claim of old Andy Roberson
about a half league of Elders I know nothing about it— R. has no
claim on me