Samuel Houston

“ And as United States senator he continued to fight for his principles of honor and wisdom. That he was unpopular among his people, and was marked for punishment, made no difference to Sam Houston. The welfare of Texas, and of the American Republic with which it united, was more to him than his own welfare.
It is a wonderful thing to know that one is right, and then to stick to the compass.
Sam Houston had his weaknesses. All men have weaknesses. The greatest men rise above them. The strength of Sam Houston was his faith in himself; his weakness was his pride in himself. ”

“ No man ever left the city of Washington with such unanimous esteem for mingled nobleness of character and faithfulness in action as Sam Houston. The following mention of him in the National Intelligencer, which for half a century was esteemed throughout the United States and Europe as the impartial chronicler of passing events—a mention made during the memorable session of the Peace Commissioners, who met in January, 1861 — deserves to be added as the closing record of his Congressional life. The Intelligencer of February 28, 1861, has this statement: "Texas is raising an army. ”

“ Sam Houston is no more. A great man has fallen. Texas' most distinguished citizen has ceased to exist among us, and it is but fitting and just that we, the representatives of the people, should betoken the high esteem in which he was held by them; and give expression to that deep feeling of regret which pervades the whole country in consequence of its great bereavement. As the representative of the county of his residence, and as his friend and admirer, I feel it incumbent on me to bespeak for the resolutions the favorable consideration of the House. ”

“ Trained as Sam Houston from childhood had been, sometimes side by side with negro and Indian laborers, as a hard-working yeoman, his whole heart from youth to old age centred on the interests of the agricultural yeomanry who tilled their own lands; and every one of his life-long appeals for union was inspired by the fact that the people at large wished to be left in peace to enjoy their homes, and not to be dragged against their will into what he to the last maintained were schemes of heartless politicians, only seeking personal ends of aggrandizement. ”

“ He had served under Jackson, and in the regular army of the United States as a lieutenant, sufficiently long to give him practice in military drill and the art of war. He had mingled with frontiersmen so long and intimately that he knew better than any other man of his times how to bring under control men not used to obedience to any will save their own. Whether fighting with Indians at Tohopeka, or with Mexicans at San Jacinto, Gen. Houston proved himself a hero as well as a soldier. ”

“ Human sagacity does not descry the future, nor apprehend how these agencies and instruments are to be provided. An erratic boyhood, a wild life among uncivilized men, a soldier's hard fare, and a hero's fate, contest with enmity, trial in station under difficulties, constitute the ordeal through which one remarkable agent was called to pass. That agent was Sam Houston, a name which forms no common part of American history. ”

“ The influence of such parents on Sam Houston was seen in every period of his life.
His early years exhibited a daring independence and self-reliance very remarkable, and to many minds indicated a disastrous rather than a prosperous future. Not until eight years old could he be induced to enter a school-house. In the imperfect schools then existing in Virginia, he learned to read and write, and obtained some skill in arithmetic. Up to the time of his father's death, which occurred when he was thirteen years old, he had hardly been to an "Old Field" school more than six months in all. ”

“ Sam Houston, placed in so responsible a place by the Consultation, was born in Virginia, but removed when a child to Tennessee with his widowed mother. He had a strong imperious and wayward disposition which showed itself from his early boyhood. At the age of fourteen he left home and joined a band of Cherokee Indians, was adopted into their tribe, learned their language, and wore their costume. In 1813 he served under Jackson in the Creek war ”

“ They held a meeting at Nacogdoches of Eastern Texas, the other day, and passed resolution to invite him to come down and help make Texas. He can have anything he asks for.”
“Who? Sam Houston?” laughed the steamboat captain—still in a bad humor. “Why, he’s turned squaw man; married to a half-breed Cherokee woman, up in the Cherokee nation. Went down to Washington on a scheme to get a government contract for selling supplies to the Cherokees, beat a senator there half to death, who dared [34] criticize him, and raised an awful muss. ”

“ A frontier population would not submit to the reins of government held by the Provisional Government of 1835, and the administration of 1836. The people saw that at that time there was only one man in Texas who could sway the multitude, whose strong hand would steady the vessel of State through the boisterous surges; that that man was Sam Houston, the hero of San Jacinto ”

“ No man in the United States was better prepared by his wide experience to judge wisely on this question than Houston, and no more magnanimous spirit had ever been shown than Houston had exhibited, first in his intercourse as an agent's clerk, then as a soldier, then again as an army agent among them. His long apprenticeship among the Chickasaws in Western Tennessee before his enlistment as a soldier under Jackson, and his detail as a lieutenant after the war to serve as military agent among the Seminoles of Georgia, were reminiscences always fresh and fragrant in his after-life ”

“ Sam Houston in Marion, Alabama, May 9th, 1840. It was not long before her influence induced him to give up strong drink, to which he never returned.
"There is a sorrow which even the hero can not bear. The storms of life may beat against the frail dwelling of man as wildly as they will, and the proud and the generous heart may still withstand the blast. But when the poisoned shaft of disappointment strikes the bosom where all we love or live for is treasured, the fruit of this world turns to ashes, and the charm of life is broken. ”

“ This book deals with him chiefly as the six-months’ general who, out of seeming defeat, achieved the triumph of Texas arms, and at one stroke established Texas independence. But we ought to admire him as a patriot statesman, rather than as a military commander.
Some other commander could have won the victory for Texas. Freedom, well or poorly led, cannot be conquered by oppression. Justice cannot be combatted, forever, by injustice. But few other men have had Sam Houston’s rugged courage. ”

“ Heroic in spirit, this family of four females and six males halted not till it had reached the verge of emigrants' wanderings sixty years ago. The Tennessee River was the boundary line between the white men and the Cherokee Indians. Eight miles from this river the Houstons pitched their tents. Here Sam and his brothers soon commenced breaking up soil never before touched by the plow, and providing subsistence for their mother and sisters. Here hard work and Sam Houston first became familiar. For a short time he went to an Academy, which at that time flourished in East Tennessee. ”

“ Parentage and Early Life — First Efforts in Education — His Boy-Life among thr Cherokee Indians. Near a locality known as Timber Ridge Church, seven miles east of Lexington, in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on the 2d of March, 1793, Sam Houston was born. ”

“ In accordance with the convictions of his life, and acting on the principles which always had governed and animated him, he threw up his commission in the army, returned with the delegation to the agency on the Hiwassee, and then resigned his commission as sub-agent among the Cherokee Indians, and went to Nashville to commence the reading necessary to practice law. Few young men had ever had such a preparatory drill in the hard service of life, beginning as Sam Houston. ”

“ The justice of a jury is slow and not always sure, hence, frontiersmen, whose homes in forest or on prairie, afar from the homes of their nativity, are not often eager to transfer their protection from a rifle which seldom misses fire to the chance of the verdict of a petit jury. The history of Rome and the British Isles is but the history of Texas antecedents. Such was the personal influence of Sam Houston over reckless frontier settlers, that as easily as he ruled by the stern despotism of a camp, he governed them by the mild sceptre of civil law. ”

“ But to this day, it is a riddle to me how he managed to reduce to obedience the unruly spirits he commanded, and to induce them to retreat across the Brazos to Buffalo Bayou. Of one thing I am certain—only Sam Houston could have done it; no other man in the republic.
Mr Ehrenberg escaped from all his perils in time to share the rejoicings of the Texians at the final evacuation of the country by the Mexican army. ”

“ Houston has been an inflexible Democrat. He is a disciple of the school of Jefferson and Jackson. He has filled many of the highest public offices, in all which he has acquitted himself with remarkable ability and with unsuspected integrity. In all positions, the most responsible as well as the most trying and perilous, he has been eminently successful. He has ever proved himself equal to any emergency in which he has been placed. ”

“ Houston's remains are buried at Huntsville, while Mrs. Houston's remains are buried alongside of those of her mother, at Independence, Texas. A simple, small, plain slab is placed over the hero's grave, with these words: "Gen. Sam Houston, born March 2, 1793. Died July 26, 1863." Nothing as yet signalizes the spot where the remains of his companion lie. ”

“ Sam Houston closed. His valedictory, like all other papers and addresses emanating from his pen and tongue, ranks him among the first statesmen and patriots of the world. Texas was prosperous. Certain formalities, hereafter to be indicated, only were necessary to introduce her to the sisterhood of the United States. He anticipated the pleasure of retiring to domestic life, only to be disappointed by the call of his countrymen for further and long-protracted services. The following document places his administration in its true light before the world ”

“ Sam Houston should justly be regarded as a great American. He laid his course and steered by it utterly regardless of the opposition. Strong characters are known as much by the enemies that they make as by the friends that they retain. When they launch into a course that they deem is right, they do not depend upon fair winds. They go ahead, if they have real faith. Threats, ridicule and dangers do not daunt them. Sometimes they may pause, to renew their courage ”

“ Governor Smith highly disapproved of the plans of the Council, and on that account incurred their hottest displeasure. Gen. Houston obeyed the Governor's orders, and reported to him at San Felipe. Receiving orders to repair to Refugio, where a junction of the troops of Grant and Fannin was to be effected, after he had returned to Washington, and arranged pressing matters at headquarters, he proceeded to Goliad, about the middle of January, 1836, and made known to the troops his orders, and enjoined obedience on his authority. ”

“ But General Houston, in a speech at Goliad and at Refugio nearby, assured the volunteers that by the direction of the governor he himself was here to be the leader in whatever was done—although he was sure that any invasion of Mexico, now, would result in only defeat and death to all concerned.
Listening to the advice of Sam Houston, many of the [197] volunteers decided not to go to Matamoros unless he favored it. Lieutenant-Colonel Johnson’s force for the march overland dropped to only sixty, and he did not go. ”

“ Sam will not risk the fate of the republic in a single foolhardy battle. The broad woods of the Brazos shall do us good service. Though you are brave, and willing to risk your lives, it would be small benefit to the country if you lost them. No, my boys, we'll give it to the vermin, never fear, they shall have it, as sure as Sam Houston stands in his own shoes."
"It's impossible for us to go back, General," cried another speaker; "can't be—must at 'em! What, General, our richest plantations lie between the Colorado and the Brazos, and are we to abandon them to these thieves? ”

“ At the same time, Sam Houston was chosen General of Texas, east of the Trinity River. The people of Brazoria, well satisfied that there was little to hope for from Santa Anna, the despot of Mexico, invited the other municipalities to co-operate with them in electing delegates to meet for a general consultation, for the purpose of providing means of safety in case of imminent danger. General Austin with the forces under his command advanced to San Antonio de Bexar and invested the place. Eight hundred armed men from all parts of the province flocked to his standard. ”

“ General Houston was the leader of the Texan revolt. While these murderous events were taking place he had only four hundred men under his command, and was quite unable to prevent them. Defence now seemed hopeless; the country was in a state of panic; the settlers were abandoning their homes and fleeing as the Mexicans advanced; but Sam Houston kept the field with a spirit like that which had animated the gallant Travis. ”