I, like several others would like to here the history behind the photos submitted for the August Monthly Photo Contest. So to get things started,
President Sam Houston's Grave - http://goo.gl/maps/oBmNL
Samuel "Sam" Houston (March 2, 1793 – July 26, 1863) was a nineteenth-century Americanstatesman, politician, and soldier. He is best known for his leading role in bringing Texas into the United States.
He was born in Timber Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, of Scots-Irish descent. Houston became a key figure in the history of Texas and was elected as the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, U.S. Senator for Texas after it joined the United States, and finally as a governor of the state. He refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy when Texas seceded from the Union in 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War, and was removed from office. To avoid bloodshed, he refused an offer of a Union army to put down the Confederate rebellion. Instead, he retired to Huntsville, Texas, where he died before the end of the Civil War.
His earlier life included migration to Tennessee from Virginia, time spent with the Cherokee Nation (into which he later was adopted as a citizen and into which he married), military service in the War of 1812, and successful participation in Tennessee politics. Houston is the only person in U.S. history to have been the governor of two different states (although other men had served as governors of more than one American territory).
In 1827, Houston was elected Governor of Tennessee as a Jacksonian. In 1829, Houston resigned as governor and relocated to Arkansas Territory. In 1832, Houston was involved in an altercation with a U.S. Congressman, followed by a high-profile trial. Shortly afterwards, he relocated to Coahuila y Tejas, then a Mexican state, and became a leader of the Texas Revolution. Sam Houston supported annexation by the United States. The city of Houston is named after him.
Houston's reputation was sufficiently large that he was honored in numerous ways after his death, among them: the US's fourth largest city, a memorial museum, a U.S. Army base, a national forest, a historical park, a university and a prominent roadside statue outside of Huntsville.
Sam Houston was the son of Major Samuel Houston and Elizabeth Paxton. Houston's ancestry is often traced to his great-great grandfather Sir John Houston, who built a family estate in Scotland in the late seventeenth century. His second son John Houston emigrated to Ulster, Ireland, during the plantation period. Under the system of primogeniture, he did not inherit the estate. After several years in Ireland, John Houston emigrated in 1735 with his family to the North American colonies, where they first settled in Pennsylvania. As it filled with LutheranGerman immigrants, Houston decided to move his family with other Scots-Irish who were migrating to lands in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. A historic plaque in Townland tells the story of the Houston family. It is located in Ballyboley Forest Park near the site of the original John Houston estate. It is dedicated to "One whose roots lay in these hills whose ancestor John Houston emigrated from this area."
The Shenandoah Valley had many farms of Scots-Irish migrants. Newcomers included the Lyle family of the Raloo area, who helped found Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. The Houston family settled nearby. Gradually John developed his land and purchased slaves. Their son Robert inherited his father's land. His youngest of five sons was Samuel Houston. Samuel Houston became a member ofMorgan's Rifle Brigade and was commissioned a major during the American Revolutionary War. At the time militia officers were expected to pay their own expenses. He had married Elizabeth Paxton and inherited his father's land, but he was not a good manager and got into debt, in part because of his militia service. Their children were born on his family's plantation near Timber Ridge Church, including Sam Houston on March 2, 1793, the fifth of nine children and the fifth son born.
Planning to move on as people did on the frontier to leave debts behind, the elder Samuel Houston patented land in Maryville the county seat of Blount Co.in East Tennessee near relatives. He died in 1807 before he could move with his family, and they moved on without him: Elizabeth taking their five sons and three daughters to the new state. Having received only a basic education on the frontier, young Sam was 14 when his family moved to Maryville. In 1809, at age 16, Houston ran away from home, because he was dissatisfied to work as a shop clerk in his older brothers' store.
He went southwest, where he lived for a few years with the Cherokee tribe led by Ahuludegi (also spelled Oolooteka) on Hiwassee Island, on the Hiwassee River above its confluence with the Tennessee. Having become chief after his brother moved west in 1809, Ahuludegi was known to the European Americans as John Jolly. He became an adoptive father to Houston, giving him the Cherokee name of Colonneh, meaning "the Raven". Houston learned fluent Cherokee, while visiting his family in Maryville every several months. Finally he returned to Maryville in 1812, and at age 19, Houston founded a one-room schoolhouse in Knox county between Maryville and Knoxville. This was the first school built in Tennessee, which had become a state in 1796.
In 1812 Houston reported to a training camp in Knoxville, Tennessee, and enlisted in the 39th Infantry Regiment to fight the British in the War of 1812. By December of that year, he had risen from private to third lieutenant. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, he was wounded in the groin by a Creek arrow. His wound was bandaged, and he rejoined the fight. When Andrew Jackson called on volunteers to dislodge a group of Red Sticks from their breastwork, Houston volunteered, but during the assault he was struck by bullets in the shoulder and arm. He returned to Maryville as a disabled veteran, but later took the army's offer of free surgery and convalesced in a New Orleans, Louisiana hospital.
Houston became close to Jackson, who was impressed with him and acted as a mentor. In 1817 Jackson appointed him sub-agent in managing the business relating to Jackson's removal of the Cherokees from East Tennessee to a reservation in what is now Arkansas. He had differences with John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, who chided him for appearing dressed as a Cherokee at a meeting. More significantly, an inquiry was begun into charges related to Houston's administration of supplies for the Native Americans. Offended, he resigned in 1818.
Following six months of study at the office of Judge James Trimble, Houston passed the bar examination in Nashville, after which he opened a legal practice in Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1818 Houston was appointed as the local prosecutor in Nashville, and was also given a command in the state militia.
In 1822 Houston was elected to the US House of Representatives for Tennessee, where he was a staunch supporter of fellow Tennessean and DemocratAndrew Jackson. He was widely considered to be Jackson's political protégé, although their ideas about appropriate treatment of Native Americans differed greatly. Houston was a Congressman from 1823 to 1827, re-elected in 1824. In 1827 he declined to run for re-election to Congress. Instead he ran for, and won, the office of governor of Tennessee, defeating the former governor, William Carroll. He planned to stand for re-election in 1829, but resigned after the dissolution of his first marriage.
On January 22, 1829, at the age of 35, Houston married 19-year-old Eliza Allen, the daughter of the well-connected planter Colonel John Allen (1776–1833) of Gallatin, Tennessee, who was a friend of Andrew Jackson. Houston's friends thought he was genuinely in love with the girl, but for unknown reasons Eliza left him shortly after the marriage and returned to her father and the couple never reconciled. Neither Houston nor Eliza Allen ever discussed the reasons for their separation; speculation and gossip accredited their split to Eliza being in love with another man. Houston seemed to care greatly for his wife's reputation and took great care to forestall any possible allegations of infidelity on their parts, writing to her father
In April 1829, in part due to the embarrassment of his well known separation, Houston resigned as governor of Tennessee and went west with the Cherokee to exile in Arkansas Territory. That year he was adopted as a citizen in the nation. There Houston cohabited with Tiana Rogers Gentry, a part-Cherokee widow in her mid-30s. They lived together for several years, and though he was still married under civil law he married Tiana under the Cherokee law. After declining to accompany Houston to Texas in 1832, she later married John McGrady. He officially divorced Eliza Allen in 1837; the following year 1838 Tiana died of pneumonia. (Eliza Allen remarried in 1840, becoming the wife of Dr. Elmore Douglass and stepmother to his 10 children; she bore him 4 children and died in 1861.) In 1833, in the living room of the Adolphus Sterne House in Nacogdoches, Houston was baptized into the Catholic faith in order to qualify under the existing law for property ownership in Coahuila y Tejas.
On May 9, 1840, Houston, aged 47 and now the President of Texas, married for a third time. The bride was 21-year-old Margaret Moffette Lea of Marion, Alabama. The union was far longer lived than his two previous unions and produced eight children born between Houston's 50th and 67th years. Margaret Houston acted as a tempering influence on her much older husband and even convinced him to stop drinking. Although the Houstons had numerous houses, they kept only one continuously, Cedar Point (1840–1863) on Trinity Bay
Their children were the following:
In 1829, Houston went west and lived again among the Cherokee in the Arkansas Territory, who in October 1829 formally adopted him as a citizen of their nation. He set up a trading post (Wigwam Neosho) near Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation, by the Verdigris River near its confluence with the Arkansas. The Cherokee gave him a nickname meaning "The Raven." During this time Houston was interviewed by the author Alexis de Tocqueville, who was traveling in the United States and its territories. Houston's abandonment of his gubernatorial office and his wife all caused a rift with his mentor President Jackson. They were not reconciled for several years.
In 1830 and 1832 Houston visited Washington, DC, to expose the frauds which government agents committed against the Cherokee. While he was in Washington in April 1832, anti-Jacksonian Congressman William Stanbery of Ohio made accusations about Houston in a speech on the floor of Congress. Attacking Jackson through his protégé, Stanbery accused Houston of being in league with John Van Fossen and Congressman Robert S. Rose. The three men had bid on supplying rations to the various tribes of Native Americans who were being forcibly relocated because of Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. After Stanbery refused to answer Houston's letters about the accusation, Houston confronted him on Pennsylvania Avenue and beat him with a hickory cane. Stanbery drew one of his pistols and pulled the trigger—the gun misfired.
On April 17 Congress ordered Houston's arrest. During his trial at the District of Columbia City Hall, he pleaded self-defense and hired Francis Scott Key as his lawyer. Houston was found guilty, but thanks to highly placed friends (among them James K. Polk), he was only lightly reprimanded. Stanbery filed charges against Houston in civil court. Judge William Cranch found Houston liable and assessed him $500 in damages. Houston left the United States for Mexico without paying the judgement.
The publicity surrounding the trial raised Houston's unfavorable political reputation. He asked his wife, Tiana Rodgers, to go with him to Mexican Texas, but she preferred to stay at their cabin and trading post in Oklahoma. She later married a man named John McGrady and died of pneumonia in 1838. Houston married again after her death.
Houston left for Texas in December 1832 and was immediately swept up in the politics of what was still a territory of the Mexican state of Coahuila. One possible theory speculates that Houston traveled to Texas at the behest of President Jackson in order to facilitate a U.S. annexation of the territory, yet this contention has not been verified with supporting evidence. Attending the Convention of 1833 as representative for Nacogdoches, Houston emerged as a supporter of William Harris Wharton and his brother, who promoted independence from Mexico, the more radical position of the American settlers and Tejanos in Texas. He also attended the Consultation of 1835. The TexasArmy commissioned him as Major General in November 1835. He negotiated a peace settlement with the Cherokee of East Texas in February 1836 to allay their fears about independence. At the convention to declare Texan Independence in March 1836, he was made Commander-in-Chief.
On March 2, 1836, his 43rd birthday, Houston signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Mexican soldiers killed all those at the AlamoMission at the end of the Siege of the Alamo on March 6. On March 11, Houston joined what constituted his army at Gonzales: 374 poorly equipped, trained, and supplied recruits. Word of the defeat at the Alamo reached Houston there, and while he waited for confirmation, he organized the recruits as the 1st Regiment Volunteer Army of Texas. On March 13, short on rations, Houston retreated before the superior forces of Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. Heavy rain fell nearly every day, causing severe morale problems among the exposed troops struggling in mud. After four days' march, near present-day LaGrange, Houston received additional troops and continued east two days later with 600 men. At Goliad, Santa Anna ordered the execution of approximately 400 volunteer Texas militia led by James Fannin, who had surrendered his forces on March 20. Near present-day Columbus on March 26, they were joined by 130 more men, and the next day learned of the Fannin disaster.
Houston continued his retreat eastward towards the Gulf coast, drawing criticism for his perceived lack of willingness to fight. On March 29, camped along the Brazos River, two companies refused to retreat further, and Houston decided to use the opportunity for rudimentary training and discipline of his force. On April 2 he organized the 2nd Regiment, received a battalion of regulars, and on April 11 ordered all troops along the Brazos to join the main army, approximately 1,500 men in all. He began crossing the Brazos on April 12.
Finally, Santa Anna caught up with Houston's army, but had split his own army into three separate forces in an attempt to encircle the Texans. At the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, Houston surprised Santa Anna and the Mexican forces during their afternoon "siesta." The Texans won a decisive victory in under 18 minutes, suffering few casualties, although Houston's ankle was shattered by a stray bullet. Badly beaten, Santa Anna was forced to sign the Treaty of Velasco, granting Texas its independence. Although Houston stayed on briefly for negotiations, he returned to the United States for treatment of his ankle wound.
Houston was twice elected president of the Republic of Texas. On September 5, 1836, he defeated Stephen F. Austin and Henry Smith with a landslide of over 79% of the vote. Houston then served from October 22, 1836, to December 10, 1838, and again from December 12, 1841, to December 9, 1844. On December 20, 1837, Houston presided over the convention of Freemasons that formed the Grand Lodge of the Republic of Texas, now the Grand Lodge of Texas. While he initially sought annexation by the U.S., Houston dropped that goal during his first term. In his second term, he strove for fiscal prudence and worked to make peace with the Native Americans. He also struggled to avoid war with Mexico, whose forces invaded twice during 1842. In response to the Regulator-Moderator War of 1844, he sent in Republic militia to put down the warfare.
President Sam Houston's Grave - http://goo.gl/maps/oBmNL
Samuel "Sam" Houston (March 2, 1793 – July 26, 1863) was a nineteenth-century Americanstatesman, politician, and soldier. He is best known for his leading role in bringing Texas into the United States.
He was born in Timber Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, of Scots-Irish descent. Houston became a key figure in the history of Texas and was elected as the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, U.S. Senator for Texas after it joined the United States, and finally as a governor of the state. He refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy when Texas seceded from the Union in 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War, and was removed from office. To avoid bloodshed, he refused an offer of a Union army to put down the Confederate rebellion. Instead, he retired to Huntsville, Texas, where he died before the end of the Civil War.
His earlier life included migration to Tennessee from Virginia, time spent with the Cherokee Nation (into which he later was adopted as a citizen and into which he married), military service in the War of 1812, and successful participation in Tennessee politics. Houston is the only person in U.S. history to have been the governor of two different states (although other men had served as governors of more than one American territory).
In 1827, Houston was elected Governor of Tennessee as a Jacksonian. In 1829, Houston resigned as governor and relocated to Arkansas Territory. In 1832, Houston was involved in an altercation with a U.S. Congressman, followed by a high-profile trial. Shortly afterwards, he relocated to Coahuila y Tejas, then a Mexican state, and became a leader of the Texas Revolution. Sam Houston supported annexation by the United States. The city of Houston is named after him.
Houston's reputation was sufficiently large that he was honored in numerous ways after his death, among them: the US's fourth largest city, a memorial museum, a U.S. Army base, a national forest, a historical park, a university and a prominent roadside statue outside of Huntsville.
Sam Houston was the son of Major Samuel Houston and Elizabeth Paxton. Houston's ancestry is often traced to his great-great grandfather Sir John Houston, who built a family estate in Scotland in the late seventeenth century. His second son John Houston emigrated to Ulster, Ireland, during the plantation period. Under the system of primogeniture, he did not inherit the estate. After several years in Ireland, John Houston emigrated in 1735 with his family to the North American colonies, where they first settled in Pennsylvania. As it filled with LutheranGerman immigrants, Houston decided to move his family with other Scots-Irish who were migrating to lands in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. A historic plaque in Townland tells the story of the Houston family. It is located in Ballyboley Forest Park near the site of the original John Houston estate. It is dedicated to "One whose roots lay in these hills whose ancestor John Houston emigrated from this area."
The Shenandoah Valley had many farms of Scots-Irish migrants. Newcomers included the Lyle family of the Raloo area, who helped found Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. The Houston family settled nearby. Gradually John developed his land and purchased slaves. Their son Robert inherited his father's land. His youngest of five sons was Samuel Houston. Samuel Houston became a member ofMorgan's Rifle Brigade and was commissioned a major during the American Revolutionary War. At the time militia officers were expected to pay their own expenses. He had married Elizabeth Paxton and inherited his father's land, but he was not a good manager and got into debt, in part because of his militia service. Their children were born on his family's plantation near Timber Ridge Church, including Sam Houston on March 2, 1793, the fifth of nine children and the fifth son born.
Planning to move on as people did on the frontier to leave debts behind, the elder Samuel Houston patented land in Maryville the county seat of Blount Co.in East Tennessee near relatives. He died in 1807 before he could move with his family, and they moved on without him: Elizabeth taking their five sons and three daughters to the new state. Having received only a basic education on the frontier, young Sam was 14 when his family moved to Maryville. In 1809, at age 16, Houston ran away from home, because he was dissatisfied to work as a shop clerk in his older brothers' store.
He went southwest, where he lived for a few years with the Cherokee tribe led by Ahuludegi (also spelled Oolooteka) on Hiwassee Island, on the Hiwassee River above its confluence with the Tennessee. Having become chief after his brother moved west in 1809, Ahuludegi was known to the European Americans as John Jolly. He became an adoptive father to Houston, giving him the Cherokee name of Colonneh, meaning "the Raven". Houston learned fluent Cherokee, while visiting his family in Maryville every several months. Finally he returned to Maryville in 1812, and at age 19, Houston founded a one-room schoolhouse in Knox county between Maryville and Knoxville. This was the first school built in Tennessee, which had become a state in 1796.
In 1812 Houston reported to a training camp in Knoxville, Tennessee, and enlisted in the 39th Infantry Regiment to fight the British in the War of 1812. By December of that year, he had risen from private to third lieutenant. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, he was wounded in the groin by a Creek arrow. His wound was bandaged, and he rejoined the fight. When Andrew Jackson called on volunteers to dislodge a group of Red Sticks from their breastwork, Houston volunteered, but during the assault he was struck by bullets in the shoulder and arm. He returned to Maryville as a disabled veteran, but later took the army's offer of free surgery and convalesced in a New Orleans, Louisiana hospital.
Houston became close to Jackson, who was impressed with him and acted as a mentor. In 1817 Jackson appointed him sub-agent in managing the business relating to Jackson's removal of the Cherokees from East Tennessee to a reservation in what is now Arkansas. He had differences with John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, who chided him for appearing dressed as a Cherokee at a meeting. More significantly, an inquiry was begun into charges related to Houston's administration of supplies for the Native Americans. Offended, he resigned in 1818.
Following six months of study at the office of Judge James Trimble, Houston passed the bar examination in Nashville, after which he opened a legal practice in Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1818 Houston was appointed as the local prosecutor in Nashville, and was also given a command in the state militia.
In 1822 Houston was elected to the US House of Representatives for Tennessee, where he was a staunch supporter of fellow Tennessean and DemocratAndrew Jackson. He was widely considered to be Jackson's political protégé, although their ideas about appropriate treatment of Native Americans differed greatly. Houston was a Congressman from 1823 to 1827, re-elected in 1824. In 1827 he declined to run for re-election to Congress. Instead he ran for, and won, the office of governor of Tennessee, defeating the former governor, William Carroll. He planned to stand for re-election in 1829, but resigned after the dissolution of his first marriage.
On January 22, 1829, at the age of 35, Houston married 19-year-old Eliza Allen, the daughter of the well-connected planter Colonel John Allen (1776–1833) of Gallatin, Tennessee, who was a friend of Andrew Jackson. Houston's friends thought he was genuinely in love with the girl, but for unknown reasons Eliza left him shortly after the marriage and returned to her father and the couple never reconciled. Neither Houston nor Eliza Allen ever discussed the reasons for their separation; speculation and gossip accredited their split to Eliza being in love with another man. Houston seemed to care greatly for his wife's reputation and took great care to forestall any possible allegations of infidelity on their parts, writing to her father
April 9, 1829
Mr. Allen, the most unpleasant & unhappy circumstance has just taken place in the family, & one that was entirely unnecessary at this time. Whatever had been my feelings or opinions in relation to Eliza at one time, I have been satisfied & it is now unfit that anything should be averted to....The only way this matter can now be overcome will be for us all to meet as tho it had never occurred, & this will keep the world, as it should ever be, ignorant that such thoughts ever were. Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous wife, & as such I pray God I may ever regard her, & trust I ever shall.
She was cold to me, and I thought did not love me. She owns that such was one cause of my unhappiness. You can judge how unhappy I was to think I was united to a woman that did not love me. This time is now past, & my future happiness can only exist in the assurance that Eliza and myself can be happy & that Mrs. Allen & you can forget the past, —forgive all & and find your lost peace & you may rest assured that nothing on my part shall be wanting to restore it. Let me know what is to be done.
Houston also requested that one of her relatives: "...publish in the Nashville papers that if any wretch ever dares to utter a word against the purity of Mrs. Houston I will come back and write the libel in his heart's blood."Mr. Allen, the most unpleasant & unhappy circumstance has just taken place in the family, & one that was entirely unnecessary at this time. Whatever had been my feelings or opinions in relation to Eliza at one time, I have been satisfied & it is now unfit that anything should be averted to....The only way this matter can now be overcome will be for us all to meet as tho it had never occurred, & this will keep the world, as it should ever be, ignorant that such thoughts ever were. Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous wife, & as such I pray God I may ever regard her, & trust I ever shall.
She was cold to me, and I thought did not love me. She owns that such was one cause of my unhappiness. You can judge how unhappy I was to think I was united to a woman that did not love me. This time is now past, & my future happiness can only exist in the assurance that Eliza and myself can be happy & that Mrs. Allen & you can forget the past, —forgive all & and find your lost peace & you may rest assured that nothing on my part shall be wanting to restore it. Let me know what is to be done.
In April 1829, in part due to the embarrassment of his well known separation, Houston resigned as governor of Tennessee and went west with the Cherokee to exile in Arkansas Territory. That year he was adopted as a citizen in the nation. There Houston cohabited with Tiana Rogers Gentry, a part-Cherokee widow in her mid-30s. They lived together for several years, and though he was still married under civil law he married Tiana under the Cherokee law. After declining to accompany Houston to Texas in 1832, she later married John McGrady. He officially divorced Eliza Allen in 1837; the following year 1838 Tiana died of pneumonia. (Eliza Allen remarried in 1840, becoming the wife of Dr. Elmore Douglass and stepmother to his 10 children; she bore him 4 children and died in 1861.) In 1833, in the living room of the Adolphus Sterne House in Nacogdoches, Houston was baptized into the Catholic faith in order to qualify under the existing law for property ownership in Coahuila y Tejas.
On May 9, 1840, Houston, aged 47 and now the President of Texas, married for a third time. The bride was 21-year-old Margaret Moffette Lea of Marion, Alabama. The union was far longer lived than his two previous unions and produced eight children born between Houston's 50th and 67th years. Margaret Houston acted as a tempering influence on her much older husband and even convinced him to stop drinking. Although the Houstons had numerous houses, they kept only one continuously, Cedar Point (1840–1863) on Trinity Bay
Their children were the following:
- Sam Houston, Jr., 1843–1894
- Nancy Elizabeth, 1846–1920 (named after her grandmothers)
- Margaret Lea, 1848–1906
- Mary William, 1850–1931
- Antoinette Power, 1852–1932 (named after Margaret's sister)
- Andrew Jackson Houston, 1854-1941 (U.S. Senator from Texas)
- William Rogers, 1858–1920
- Temple Lea Houston, 1860–1905 (named after Margaret's father) (state senator of Texas legislature, 1885–1888)
In 1829, Houston went west and lived again among the Cherokee in the Arkansas Territory, who in October 1829 formally adopted him as a citizen of their nation. He set up a trading post (Wigwam Neosho) near Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation, by the Verdigris River near its confluence with the Arkansas. The Cherokee gave him a nickname meaning "The Raven." During this time Houston was interviewed by the author Alexis de Tocqueville, who was traveling in the United States and its territories. Houston's abandonment of his gubernatorial office and his wife all caused a rift with his mentor President Jackson. They were not reconciled for several years.
In 1830 and 1832 Houston visited Washington, DC, to expose the frauds which government agents committed against the Cherokee. While he was in Washington in April 1832, anti-Jacksonian Congressman William Stanbery of Ohio made accusations about Houston in a speech on the floor of Congress. Attacking Jackson through his protégé, Stanbery accused Houston of being in league with John Van Fossen and Congressman Robert S. Rose. The three men had bid on supplying rations to the various tribes of Native Americans who were being forcibly relocated because of Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. After Stanbery refused to answer Houston's letters about the accusation, Houston confronted him on Pennsylvania Avenue and beat him with a hickory cane. Stanbery drew one of his pistols and pulled the trigger—the gun misfired.
On April 17 Congress ordered Houston's arrest. During his trial at the District of Columbia City Hall, he pleaded self-defense and hired Francis Scott Key as his lawyer. Houston was found guilty, but thanks to highly placed friends (among them James K. Polk), he was only lightly reprimanded. Stanbery filed charges against Houston in civil court. Judge William Cranch found Houston liable and assessed him $500 in damages. Houston left the United States for Mexico without paying the judgement.
The publicity surrounding the trial raised Houston's unfavorable political reputation. He asked his wife, Tiana Rodgers, to go with him to Mexican Texas, but she preferred to stay at their cabin and trading post in Oklahoma. She later married a man named John McGrady and died of pneumonia in 1838. Houston married again after her death.
Houston left for Texas in December 1832 and was immediately swept up in the politics of what was still a territory of the Mexican state of Coahuila. One possible theory speculates that Houston traveled to Texas at the behest of President Jackson in order to facilitate a U.S. annexation of the territory, yet this contention has not been verified with supporting evidence. Attending the Convention of 1833 as representative for Nacogdoches, Houston emerged as a supporter of William Harris Wharton and his brother, who promoted independence from Mexico, the more radical position of the American settlers and Tejanos in Texas. He also attended the Consultation of 1835. The TexasArmy commissioned him as Major General in November 1835. He negotiated a peace settlement with the Cherokee of East Texas in February 1836 to allay their fears about independence. At the convention to declare Texan Independence in March 1836, he was made Commander-in-Chief.
On March 2, 1836, his 43rd birthday, Houston signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Mexican soldiers killed all those at the AlamoMission at the end of the Siege of the Alamo on March 6. On March 11, Houston joined what constituted his army at Gonzales: 374 poorly equipped, trained, and supplied recruits. Word of the defeat at the Alamo reached Houston there, and while he waited for confirmation, he organized the recruits as the 1st Regiment Volunteer Army of Texas. On March 13, short on rations, Houston retreated before the superior forces of Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. Heavy rain fell nearly every day, causing severe morale problems among the exposed troops struggling in mud. After four days' march, near present-day LaGrange, Houston received additional troops and continued east two days later with 600 men. At Goliad, Santa Anna ordered the execution of approximately 400 volunteer Texas militia led by James Fannin, who had surrendered his forces on March 20. Near present-day Columbus on March 26, they were joined by 130 more men, and the next day learned of the Fannin disaster.
Houston continued his retreat eastward towards the Gulf coast, drawing criticism for his perceived lack of willingness to fight. On March 29, camped along the Brazos River, two companies refused to retreat further, and Houston decided to use the opportunity for rudimentary training and discipline of his force. On April 2 he organized the 2nd Regiment, received a battalion of regulars, and on April 11 ordered all troops along the Brazos to join the main army, approximately 1,500 men in all. He began crossing the Brazos on April 12.
Finally, Santa Anna caught up with Houston's army, but had split his own army into three separate forces in an attempt to encircle the Texans. At the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, Houston surprised Santa Anna and the Mexican forces during their afternoon "siesta." The Texans won a decisive victory in under 18 minutes, suffering few casualties, although Houston's ankle was shattered by a stray bullet. Badly beaten, Santa Anna was forced to sign the Treaty of Velasco, granting Texas its independence. Although Houston stayed on briefly for negotiations, he returned to the United States for treatment of his ankle wound.
Houston was twice elected president of the Republic of Texas. On September 5, 1836, he defeated Stephen F. Austin and Henry Smith with a landslide of over 79% of the vote. Houston then served from October 22, 1836, to December 10, 1838, and again from December 12, 1841, to December 9, 1844. On December 20, 1837, Houston presided over the convention of Freemasons that formed the Grand Lodge of the Republic of Texas, now the Grand Lodge of Texas. While he initially sought annexation by the U.S., Houston dropped that goal during his first term. In his second term, he strove for fiscal prudence and worked to make peace with the Native Americans. He also struggled to avoid war with Mexico, whose forces invaded twice during 1842. In response to the Regulator-Moderator War of 1844, he sent in Republic militia to put down the warfare.
Houston at the
Battle of San JacintoThe painting
Surrender of Santa Annaby William Huddle shows the Mexican general Santa Anna's surrender to a wounded Sam Houston. It hangs in theTexas State Capitol.
notice the clogs
