Houston’s Speech claiming that the Plot was put on for Political Purposes

“. . . My weak condition warns me against giving vent to feelings which will come up when I behold the efforts of whipsters and demagogues to mislead the people. Here in Texas they convert the misfortunes of the people into political capital. Property has been burned in some instances, and here and there a case of insubordination has been found among the negroes. Occasionally a scoundrel has attempted to run a negro off to sell him; and all these things are charged to abolitionism. Terrible stories are put afloat of arms discovered, your capitol in flames, kegs of powder found under houses, thousands of negroes engaged in insurrectionary plots, wells poisoned, and hundreds of bottles of strychnine found. Town after town has been reported in ashes, and by the time the report has been found to be false, some new story to keep up the public excitement has been invented. The people of the South have been filled with horror by these accounts, and instead of Texas being looked upon as the most inviting spot on earth, they turn from it as from a land accursed. Who will buy land here, so long as these things continue? What Southern planter will emigrate with his slaves to such a country? If there was a cause for it, we could bear it without a murmur; but there has been no cause for the present state of feeling. We all know how every occurrence has been magnified by the disunion press and leaders and scattered abroad, and for no other purpose than to arouse the passions of the people and drive them into the Southern Disunion movement; for if you can make the people believe that the terrible accounts of abolition plots here are true, they will be ready for anything, sooner than suffer their continuance. Who are the men that are circulating these reports, and taking the lead in throwing the country into confusion? Are they the strong slaveholders of the country? No; examine the matter and it will be found that by far the large majority of them never owned a negro, and never will one. I know some of them who are making the most fuss, who would not make good negroes if they were blacked. And these are the men who are carrying on practical abolitionism, by taking up planters’ negroes and hanging them. They are the gentlemen who belong to the dueling family that don’t fight with knives but choose something that can be dodged. Some of them deserve a worse fate than Senator Wigfall would visit on me; and, sooner or later, when the people find out their schemes, they will get it. Texas can not afford to be ruined by such men. Even the fact that they belong to the Simon Pure Constitutional Democracy will not save them.”¹