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Seat of Empire | 26 || Chapter 3 | False Start From recent indications, there can be no doubt that there is a settled purpose among you to act upon this matter at the present session of congress. . . . If a proper regard be had in the selection of a beautiful and eligible site in the upper country, as the permanent seat of government, it can doubtless be made the source of bringing a large revenue into the treasury. From a letter to the editor written by “A Citizen” appearing in the October 11, 1837, issue of the Telegraph and Texas Register On September 28, 1837, Congressman Thomas Rusk of Nacogdoches rose from his seat in the Texas House of Representatives to offer a proposal. Although he stood in the assembly hall of the national government, his gaze rested not on elegant wall hangings, intricate carpet designs, and the rich sheen of oak desktops, but on crudely assembled chairs, plank flooring, and bare walls. He spoke not to finely dressed aristocrats wearing polished footwear, but to battlehardened frontiersmen in mud-caked boots. No carriages waited outside to bear their owners home. No cobblestone streets led away from the steps of the capitol. No waiters in fine restaurants polished silverware or laid out expensive china in anticipation of the arrival of distinguished congressmen at the end of the day. Thomas Rusk stood in an inelegant room in a plain wooden building surrounded by the lean-tos, canvas tents, and primitive shacks making up the undistinguished, uncomfortable , and just plain ugly Texas capital city of Houston. With his proposal Thomas Rusk aimed to take the first step toward the creation of a government seat worthy of the great republic he and his colleagues were certain Texas would become. Members of Congress had gathered in the capital three days earlier at the behest of President Sam Houston, who had ordered a special congressional session intended to yield a new land law, as well as to solve the issue of the republic’s eastern boundary with the “United States of the North.”1 But Rusk’s resolution ignored these goals. He knew that, while President Houston possessed False Start | 27 | authority to call this meeting of the people’s representatives, the chief executive was powerless to dictate its agenda. Thomas Rusk wished for Congress to begin the process of establishing a new permanent seat of government. He entreated his colleagues to form a committee of three House members “to enquire into the propriety of selecting a site.” These three would work in tandem with whatever committee the Senate would appoint toward the same purpose. The House quickly adopted Rusk’s proposal and named Edward Burleson and William Menefee to join the resolution’s sponsor on the House committee . Upon receipt of this news from the House, the Senate joined the effort on September 29. Senators James Lester, Emory Rains, and William Wharton agreed to serve alongside their House counterparts. The joint committee’s members then chose Congressman Rusk as its chairman. An anonymous letter writer laid the matter before the public in the October 11, 1837, Telegraph and Texas Register: “It will be a very easy matter, as the geographical situation of the country is well known to you all, to settle upon the most fit and eligible site nearest the centre of the republic as the permanent seat of government of the republic. Bastrop is represented as having high claims upon the attention of the government, and perhaps a better location could not be made.” The writer poked at the hornet’s nest of regional interests by adding: “If commissioners could be appointed at the present session of congress . . . necessary public buildings might be erected so as to be in readiness for the reception of congress at its next session, should they determine not to hold another session here.” Three days later the Telegraph and Texas Register reminded its readers that, by law, the city of Houston was to host the government for another three years. Houston property owners would, according to the newspaper , suffer unfairly should the government depart prior to 1840. “We trust therefore that this congress will not be so unjust as rashly to deprive these citizens of what they may properly consider vested rights.”2 Congress nevertheless pressed on. After Lester and Rusk reported back to their respective bodies around October 11, each house drafted resolutions regarding the site selection process for the other to concur with. On October 14, while debating its...

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