"Submitted for the USGenWeb Archives by DeAnne Norred-Forrest, 03/07/2004" ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** "His Adopted State" San Marcos, Texas August 30th, 1881 Editor Columbia Herald: Dear Sir: I received a few days ago a copy of your paper and was so much pleased with its make up and contents that I have concluded to subscribe for it. Please find enclosed post office order for one dollar and fifty cents. My attention has been called to an editorial in your paper of the 18th inst, with reference to Mr. R.H. Smith's observations on Texas, with the request that I notice and exhibit their evident falsity. On the 16th day of May, 1861 near Clarksville, Arkansas, there fell, in the very for front of battle, shot through the head with a minnie-ball, Capt. W.H. Smith, than whom no truer man ever left the state of Missouri to battle for the southern cause. [Illegible]....intervention between the wounding and his death, I nursed him tenderly and when we gave him soldiers' sepulture with the vollies over his grave we shed tears of grief at our own loss, and of sym- pathy for his bereaved ones far away in the land he loved. It is with reluctance that I am compelled to class with visitors of the Parson Conway stripe, a brother of my gallant commander, but duty impels me to say that Mr. Smith's statements with regard to Texas as embodied in the editorial above alluded to entitle his name to be associated with those emissaries of the outrage men that have misrepresented and maligned every southern community. A very recent trip across the state from San Antonio to Dallas in addition to sixteen years of residence during which time I have traveled largely over the state, enables me to say that Mr. Smith's statement that he had seen a great amount of squalid poverty in Texas towns is absolutely unjustified by facts. In the suburbs of most of our towns are many negro cabins and and Mexican Jacols, of rude exterior and uninviting appearance, but a glance into their interior would dispel the idea of want and the neatness and cleanliness in the jacols especially would put to the blush the housekeeping in many more pretentions (sic) dwellings. In my own country the only actual paupers have been poor fellows from other states who have sought this climate hoping that they might be restored to health. Within the last year, two such cases, one an Arkansan, the other from Delaware, have been cared for and buried, but the pauper fund in not exhausted and mendicancy is almost unknown. That Texas towns are largely filled with lawless men is, to very mildly state it, a mistake, and coming from any other source would receive a more decided denial. As it is, Bob Smith gains no credit for himself by making such a statement. A review of Texas crime during the last decade will show that it is not in disproportion to what it has been in your own state, and the suggestion of the "glass house" adage I hope may deter you from again doing us so great injustice as you have done. As to the grasses and crops, Mr. Smith is most inexcusably mistaken. One year with another our yield per acre of oats will largely exceed yours - our corn crop has never been a total failure, and this year is the worst in my 16 years of residence. I will have as I have always had, corn to sell. Green Patterson, Joe Wigham, Turner Gosling, Barnett Wilhite and others of my neigh- bors, all Boone county men, have never failed to make good crops of wheat, corn and cotton and all of them are prosperous. Nor is it true that no grasses can be substituted for the native that Mr. Smith says is so easily destroyed. The mesquite, like your blue-grass spontaneously follows prairie grass, and no hardier or more nutricious food can be found. The Colorado and Egyptian grasses are equal to any I have ever seen for hay, and grows well on all our lands in almost any season. I admit that we have no very large streams but I fail to recall any in your state that surpass in beauty and purity the many in my section and especially invite Mr. Smith to visit my own San Marcos of which pages of poetry and prose have been written. I would outrage my feelings did I permit myself to say aught in disparagement of my native state. In all sincerity I advise those who are well and pleasantly situated to stay there. Do what you can to build up your waste places. I will rejoice with you at her every advancing step in wealth and prosperity, but I adjure you that this be not done by misrepresentations of a sister state, scarcely a county in which does not hold sons of Missouri, valued citizens, who cherish an almost filial reverence for the mother state and who feel themselves personally aggrieved by such unjustifiable allusions. In conclusion, allow me to any that memory carries me back to a time when only the rude cabin of the hardy pioneer was to be seen where are now the stately mansions of their descendants, and that among the proudest names in your county or commonwealth, I recall some who 40 years ago had nought buth their energies to build up from. May not the next half century show like advances here. Let us as children of a common mother build up together. Very respectfully, S.D. JACKMAN