have multiplied too rapidly upon our hands. They never have and never will do Texas any good; but much evil, independent of the cost, results from them. I therefore request you will furnish no more facilities or aid of any kind to persons of this description. They are mere Leeches. We have no use for and do not want any men for a less period than one year or during the war. Such we will be happy to receive.

The supplies at Galveston were nearly played out, and both troops and prisoners were beginning to feel the pinch of want.[52] 

By September 4 whatever danger there may have been from Indians or Mexicans, operating independently or jointly, had passed. On that date Whistler wrote from Nacogdoches that there had never been any disposition on the part of the Indians along the border to attack the United States frontier and that if they had had any intentions of warring on the Texans, the presence of his troops had discouraged them. On October 13 be complained that his men had suffered the hardship of a long march in coming to Nacogdoches to accord protection to a foreign state.[53]  The Indians, be reported, had made no disturbances, but were quietly pursuing their various occupations. He found the stories that had been circulated to the prejudice of the Indians to be entirely false. Yet, at the end of November 1836, there were still 428 regulars of the United States army at Nacogdoches. Shortly thereafter, on December 19, in view of the state of affairs on the Mexican frontier and because of the desire of the Jackson administration not to irritate Mexico unnecessarily but to maintain strict neutrality, these troops were withdrawn from Nacogdoches and returned to the United States.[54] 

In the meantime, on August 5, Jackson suspended the movement of the Tennessee volunteers to the Sabine, and on August 12 informed Amos Kendall, Postmaster General and presidential confidant, "I have no doubt [it] was intended by Gaines to get troops there who would at once went over to the Texan army; but I have stopped it in the bud."[55]  Mexico felt outraged at Gaines' conduct, and her special