in safety. In fact, reports are daily in circulation of the loss of property that individual[s] have sustained by these marauding parties of Mexicans. The Mexican character is so well known to the American that we never know when to trust them, those parties roam through the country calling themselves Federals. We know nothing of the truth of these statements and yet the citizens of our County has [sic] to suffer for the depredations committed by these parties. If your excellency could advise any means whereby the authorities of this County could demand of those parties some showing where they belong and what business leads them here so they might travel the County as our Citizens, certainly our county would feel herself guarded from those apprehensions of danger that daily occur.[103]

When the question of the status of county civil officers who joined the Federal army or accepted commissions from the government of the Republic of the Río Grande came up, the Attorney General of Texas ruled that the government of Texas would not recognize as an officer any man who left his position as such, or received a commission from any foreign power.[104]  The Acting Secretary of State, Joseph Waples, ordered all vacancies created under such circumstances to be filled according to law.

In view of the strong sentiment for the Federalist cause among the inhabitants of the lower Nueces frontier, Cárdenas lost no time in enlisting Texan volunteers for the new Federalist army, and Plummer, himself, organized a spy company to operate along the lower Nueces to give warning of any Centralist advance in that direction. John McDaniel, a lieutenant in the Federal army, appealed in an open letter "to the young and the brave," saying,

You now have the most favorable of opportunities for displaying your chivalry and generosity and crowning yourselves with that glory for which the youth of Texas so eagerly pant, by shouldering your rifles and marching beyond the Río Grande, and relieving the oppressed, who are now strug-