Sam Houston: Soldier, Patriot, Statesman

by Jeffrey Dane

Single words often have multiple meanings. Raven, for example, will bring to most minds a noun, from Old English hrœfn, signifying a large, glossy black bird (Corvus corax) of Europe, Asia, northern Africa, and America, similar in appearance to a crow, but larger. As the amorous man might so refer to his very-dark-haired inamorata, some in the Alamo Society might describe one of our number, a young lady, as “a raven-haired beauty.” The literary-minded would think of the title of an 1845 poem by Edgar Allen Poe, or even of the name of an English novelist, playwright and journalist — Simon Arthur Noël Raven — who satirically portrayed the hedonism of the mid-20th-century upper classes of English society. A young student, as-yet-untutored in spelling and innocent of the general experience of living, might describe someone as “stark-raven mad.”

In the mind of the historian of the American West, however, mention of The Raven would bring to mind the nickname of Gen. Sam Houston.

Our own actions clearly reflect our personal preferences. George Washington remained conscious and observant of rank and protocol: he preferred the formal bow in introductions rather than the more personal and egalitarian handshake. He was also against class distinction, rejecting out of hand the notion that he be made king of our then-new country. By decreeing his slaves be freed on the passing of his wife, Martha Custis (she outlived him by less than two years), he did at least something to limit the human hypocrisy of having owned them in the first place.

Congressman Crockett is referred to even today with the more popular name “Davy,” though in keeping with convention he generally signed his name as David. Conversely, Gen. Houston seems to have preferred the shortened and more informal version of his first name and usually rendered his signature as Sam Houston.

Like Lorenzo de Zavala, Houston was the fifth of nine children. This central placement extended itself to the position he occupies in the creation and early history of Texas. He was Virginia-born (in 1793) and raised in Tennessee but he made his mark in the American west, giving yet further credence to the idea that prophets aren’t appreciated in their own countries. He shared this with James Bowie, who was born in Kentucky, lived in Missouri, and raised in Louisiana, but who adopted Texas as his own.

It’s no accident that Sam Houston occupies such iconic status in western history generally, and in the history of Texas in particular. He was elected President of the Republic of Texas not once but twice; he served the state of Tennessee as a U.S. congressman, and later the state of Texas as U.S. senator and also as its governor. His own father, Major Sam Houston, had taken part in the American Revolution.

The younger Houston served under Gen. Andrew Jackson against the Creek Indians. He was wounded in March, 1814 in Alabama at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and in May he was promoted to Second Lieutenant. Houston’s courage had made an impression on Jackson who, after the war, helped in securing him a position as an agent for the Cherokee Indians, a commission Houston kept until 1818.

Worth mentioning because it’s revealing of his character, one of Houston’s reasons for resigning from the army at that time was that he was criticized by then-Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, whose sensibilities may have been offended because Houston had had the audacity to appear before him wearing Indian garb, which he often did in those days. Admonitions like this have their modern-day counterparts in the traditional business office, where the petty, apparently with little else to do, focus on the inconsequential.

Some of his time with the Cherokees in Tennessee was spent near what evolved into the town of Dayton, the site of the Scopes Trial of 1925.

Like most young people, Houston hadn’t liked school itself — but unlike most young people he read a great deal on his own and absorbed what he felt might benefit him. In that sense he was more self-learned than self-taught. In his late teens, he left home to live with the Cherokees.

There’s no place on Earth where legends don’t arise. Those that have developed in Texas seem to have done so in ways consistent with the enormity of the state, and in line with the magnitude of the Western treasures found there in its culture, traditions, historic sites, and especially in its people of enlightenment, refinement, cultivation, and particularly in its pride of heritage (the Texas flag is flown right alongside Old Glory in most venues). The Sam Houston legend has him as being 6′6″ tall in his maturity. A large, commanding man he certainly was, though he was not six-feet-six. By age 19, according to his own military records, he was still, in that era, a physically imposing figure at 6′2” — more prosaic but also more accurate.

The Cherokee chief, Oolooteka, adopted Houston as a son, and called him Colonneh — The Raven. Nevermore would the Cherokee so closely embrace a man of another nation. That young Houston lived with them for three years seems indicative of a human sensitivity and earnestness unusual in most people in their understanding of and tolerance for those whose culture is distant from their own.

He followed the Cherokees when they were relocated to Arkansas and he acted as an advisor, even going to Washington, DC on their behalf on several occasions. It was during this period that he also visited Texas, where he developed a keen interest in the inhabitants’ yearnings for a separation from Mexico.

After 1818 Houston returned to Tennessee to study law — and was elected district attorney in his first year of practice. To set up a law practice today without the relevant schooling and official authorizations would land an individual in a court of law not as an attorney but as the defendant charged with the crime of practicing law illegally. In Sam Houston’s day, the requirements were not as stringent as they are now, and qualified but self-learned lawyers could open a practice — provided, of course, they had had the training — without ever having attended college or university. Names that come to mind immediately are Andrew Jackson, Martin van Buren, Millard Filmore, and Abraham Lincoln, all of whom were admitted to the bar (in 1787, 1803, 1823, and 1837, respectively). In their company, too, is William Barret Travis, bar-admitted around 1830. Our history offers us a rich record of self-made people in all fields, and of varying degrees of success.

Clearly Sam Houston was a man who marched to the rhythm of his own drummer: whether he appeared in traditional clothing or in Indian dress, he was an effective and impressive public speaker. In 1821, once again through the influence of Andrew Jackson, Houston was made a major general of the Tennessee militia. Within two years he was a congressman, and was re-elected in 1825. By 1827, the year slavery was abolished in New York, Sam Houston was Tennessee’s governor. He was then 34 years old.

As blood-letting was a primitive (and in retrospect, asinine) means of healing in those days, dueling was a primitive attempt at settling scores, with the latter serving little useful purpose and the former practice doing infinitely more harm than good (it was believed the human body contained 12 pints of blood). Not far from Franklin, Kentucky, Houston fought a duel with General William A. White, seriously wounding him. This happened on September 21, 1826 — a year less two days before James Bowie’s knife was thrust into public consciousness on a Mississippi River sandbar and cut loose the facts from the fiction that soon surrounded him.

As a senator, Houston’s reputation was characterized by his benevolence toward native Americans, and by his steadfast allegiance to the entire country as a cohesive entity. For these principles he would eventually have to pay the ultimate price.

Early in 1832 he was in Washington, DC. The April 2 edition of the National Intelligencer published remarks ascribed to Ohio congressman William Stanbery. The comments alleged that Houston and another congressman, John Henry Eaton, were involved in fraud. The very day after the newspaper item appeared, Houston wrote directly to Stanbery, asking if he might be kind enough to explain the comments. Ten days afterward, Senator Houston and Congressman Stanbery encountered each other on Pennsylvania Avenue. Ensued a scandále, in which Houston battered the man with a walking-stick. The phrase “The Gentleman From The Cane” has been associated with David Crockett, but Houston’s actions might have earned him a fitting nickname, The Gentleman With The Cane.

The altercation foreshadowed an incident that would occur three years later, when on January 30, 1835 a man tried what was the first actually attempted presidential assassination. (A plot to kill George Washington had been uncovered and thwarted). A man pointed two pistols, both of which miraculously misfired, at President Jackson, who was approaching the capitol building to attend funeral services for representative Warren Ransom Davis. Jackson had been a professional soldier; even at his advanced age he was far from frail and was still wiry and forceful; and he was effectively devoid of physical fear (a trait he seems to have shared with James Bowie and, later, Wyatt Earp). Before the culprit, Richard Lawrence, could be subdued by presidential aides, the 68-year-old Jackson, who could be extremely quick-tempered and combative, had already taken his cane to the man and proceeded to beat him severely about the head and shoulders.

The outcome of the Houston caning incident is that he found himself involved in a lawsuit, and on April 18 the case against him went before the House of Representatives. Though he had an attorney, he also addressed the assembly directly. Houston won his case — but was still chastised by the group. Such is the world of contradictions and half-way measures. It’s been said you can’t argue with success — but those of the sore-loser mentality will still try, regardless of how foolish they look in doing so.

The links, even if small, in the chain that binds us to our own history can be stronger than we might realize. The man Houston had engaged to represent him in the lawsuit was a 52-year-old lawyer named Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), now famous as the author of the poem “The Star-Spangled Banner,” written during the War of 1812 (in which the then-19-year-old Sam Houston had served). While it was Key himself who wrote the text, the actual tune we know today as the national anthem of the United States was written by an Englishman, John Stafford Smith.

In early June of 1832, Houston was in New York to arrange journeys to the American west. On October 9, he made the acquaintance of America’s first great popular writer, Washington Irving.

His political career stained, Houston went to Texas late that year. At the outbreak of the Texas Revolution in 1835, he was named commanding general of the Texas forces. Warranting mention here is a now-classic line spoken by actor Richard Boone, who portrayed Gen. Sam Houston in John Wayne’s film The Alamo: “. . . the fly in the buttermilk is that there ain’t no armies in Texas!” The comment illustrates the circumstances in which the historical Sam Houston found himself. But history shows us he rose to the occasions admirably.

In April, 1836, six weeks after the fall of the Alamo, occurred the event with which Sam Houston is most closely associated: the defeat of the Mexican army at San Jacinto, near what’s now the enormous Texas city that bears his name. Even as the Alamo defenders were being slaughtered early on the morning of Sunday, March 6, Houston, as Commander in Chief, was trying to assemble an army that could protect Texans against the Mexican forces heading northward under Gen. Santa Anna. On Thursday, April 21, Houston’s men, though outnumbered, overtook the Mexican troops in a decisive mid-late afternoon battle that lasted less than twenty minutes.

Historian and artist Joseph Musso has pointed out that Wayne’s Alamo movie is the only film that accurately depicts what Sam Houston himself wore at San Jacinto: buckskins.

Previously, in mid-January of 1836, Houston had ordered James Bowie to destroy the Alamo. Posterity shows us that Bowie didn’t carry out these orders. The course American history might have taken if the Alamo had then been blown up is a matter of fruitless but still fascinating speculation.

For years it was thought that Gen. Houston was shot in or above the right ankle at the Battle of San Jacinto. Subsequent findings by his great-great-granddaughter, Madge Roberts, seem to indicate that the wound had been to his left leg, notwithstanding the now-famous Henry Arthur McCardle painting, “The Surrender of Santa Anna,” in which Houston is depicted as having been wounded in the wrong leg. The physician who treated Houston and others at San Jacinto was Dr. Alexander W. Ewing. McCardle’s painting dates from 1886, twenty-three years after Houston’s death and a full fifty years after the battle.

As Santa Anna had had the gallantry to spare the lives of the Alamo’s captured non-combatants (women, children, and a few others), Houston, too, showed generosity in dealing with the Mexican leader in a manner that reflected positively on each of them.

There may have been more Masons involved in the Texas Revolution than in any other central event in American history. It’s sometimes presumed that this fraternal connection between Houston and Santa Anna — both men were members of the Masonic order — may have played a role in Houston’s magnanimity and benevolent treatment of the Mexican general. More significant is the observation by historian and author J.R. Edmondson that Sam Houston, for whatever his human imperfections may have been, realized that even from only a practical viewpoint, the cause of Texas would be better served by keeping Santa Anna alive and promoting a peace, rather than by executing him and inciting reprisals and further conflict with Mexico from Santa Anna’s followers.

Instead of acting on impulse and going off half-cocked, as some are wont to do, Gen. Houston opted for prudence and thought the matter through. We can now only try to imagine what might have been if the two principals had had opposite views — that is, if Santa Anna had shown some leniency at the Alamo, and if Gen. Houston had executed the Mexican general at San Jacinto. The possibilities could fill a book.

Noah Smithwick later wrote, “Had the bloody wretch been hanged, as the army demanded and as he richly deserved, the Mexican army under General Filisola would have made a combined attack on the Texans and probably have overwhelmed them; but, with the president in hand, the Texans held the key to the situation. Like Washington, Houston proved himself equally as competent to guide the helm of the ship of state as to command its army.”

In any case, it’s a credit to Sam Houston’s character that he dealt with Santa Anna as he did, with a professional courtesy we might expect among gentlemen and high-ranking officers, and that what transpired after the Mexican army’s defeat featured a degree of human dignity.

Sam Houston was married three times. His first wife was Eliza Allen; they were married in early January, 1829, but their union was very short-lived. Some of the family tradition says that Houston had suffered a wound that never healed properly and which had to be drained on a daily basis, and that his young wife found this so decisively unpleasant that she chose not to continue their union. Houston himself held her entirely blameless.

In the summer of 1830 he married a Cherokee woman, Tiana Rodgers (whose name is sometimes given as Diana). “. . . I liked the wild liberty of the Red men better than the tyranny of my brothers,” he wrote.

In Alabama in May of 1840 he married Margaret Moffette Lea, with whom he spent the rest of his life and had eight children. Reminiscent of the affirmative and settling effect Grace Williams is said to have had on her WWI hero husband, Sgt. Alvin York, Margaret Houston is reputed to have “reformed” the general by convincing him to at least be temperate and to join the church.

The new Republic of Texas had Houston as its president. Within two years he was serving a term in the Texas congress and in 1841 he was elected president again. It was only in 1845 that Houston succeeded in his assiduous efforts to have Texas annexed to the United States, but the price paid for this was the advent of the Mexican War. Houston declined a commission as general — he was already in his fifties — but instead served as a senator from the new state. In 1859, he was elected governor of Texas.

There seems to be no documented evidence that Franz Schubert ever personally met his idol, Beethoven — notwithstanding the popular legend that he summoned the courage to visit him just before The Master’s death. In the case of Sam Houston, sad sequels can show us we have begun our pilgrimages not an hour too soon. In May 1845, Houston embarked with his family on a journey to Nashville, Tennessee to visit with former president Jackson. They reached Jackson’s home, The Hermitage, on June 8 — only to find that he had died just one hour before their arrival.

The Hollywood studios’ debasement of composer Alfred Newman’s score for the film The Greatest Story Ever Told was nothing less than musical vandalism and ultimately took years off the composer’s life. “It’s my name but it isn’t my work. I’d be pleased if my name were removed from the credits,” he said. Similarly, the American Civil War was a trying time for Houston, and the difficulties and frustrations he underwent may have contributed to shortening his life — something which many of us today can personally understand, and even identify with. His allegiance was to the United States as a unity; he was totally unwilling to side with the Confederacy; and he tried to prevent Texas from seceding from the union. His thanks for this integrity was to be deposed as governor in 1861. This unofficially marked the beginning of the end for Houston.

The Beethoven family died out long ago, but the Houston family name is carried on today by his direct descendants, including his great-grandson, Sam Houston IV, and at this point the author of this article must take a personal role in relating some details of a few relatively recent events. — I had seen Mr. Houston from a distance at Washington-on-the-Brazos early in March 2007, but didn’t have the opportunity on that occasion to actually make his acquaintance. Patience can indeed have its own rewards. So can perseverance, and the wait was well worth it, by compensation. I ultimately had the pleasure of meeting with Sam Houston IV in late February, 2008, and again earlier this year.

One of Mr. Houston’s oldest and closest friends, Ben Warren, is a direct descendant of one of the more noteworthy soldiers and statesmen of 1830s Texas: Edward Burleson. During the Siege of Bexar on November 26, 1835, Burleson participated in the skirmish now known as the Grass Fight (in which a man named James Bowie took part). At the Battle of San Jacinto, Burleson commanded the First Regiment, the first of Gen. Houston’s forces to charge the Mexican army. Later that day it was Burleson himself who accepted the surrender and sword of Col. Juan Almonte, one of Santa Anna’s more refined and sophisticated staff officers, who acted as interpreter for Santa Anna when he was interviewed by Gen. Houston.

Sam Houston IV had told me, “You will find Mr. Warren to be very informed on Texas history.” His comment was understatement epitomized. I found out more from Mr. Warren, a veritable expert in the history of Texas, during our several conversations than I would have learned at a seminar.

On Wednesday, February 25, 2009, I had the honor of being taken by Mr. Houston himself to the entity devoted to his great-grandfather: the Sam Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville, TX. Accompanying us on that day was Mr. Warren.

While honesty may be the best policy it can still prompt a confusing scenario. At the gift shop after the Museum visit, Mr. Warren and I approached the cashier as Mr. Houston stood only a few feet away. I said to the clerk, “This is my friend, Ben Warren. He’s a descendant of Edward Burleson.” The cashier looked at me skeptically and said, with a good-natured smile, “Right — and I suppose that other gentleman with you, standing over there, is Stephen Austin?” I had no choice but to respond, “No, that’s Sam Houston.”

One of my gift-shop purchases was a replica of the original printed broadside of the Texas Declaration of Independence, rendered on the customary light-brown, textured parchment paper. Gen. Houston himself was one of those who signed the original, handwritten Declaration on March 2, 1836, so his name (as a delegate from Refugio) appears printed with the others’ on the document. (The DRT Library on the Alamo grounds in San Antonio has Samuel Maverick’s own copy of it, with his personal annotations). The upshot of this purchase was that just before Mr. Houston dropped me off at my lodgings that evening, I told him I had always wanted to have a copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence with Sam Houston’s actual signature on it — and, offering him my pen, I added that he himself was the only man who could make it happen. He obligingly signed it for me at the bottom, and since then I’ve wondered how many people in Texas, or in the entire country altogether, actually have a copy of that Declaration with the signature of Sam Houston on it.

The following vignette is very telling. Enroute from Hunstville, we had stopped for dinner at a Cracker Barrel Restaurant, where my traveling companions introduced me to chicken dumplings known regionally as Slicks. Insistent on treating Mr. Warren and me to dinner, Mr. Houston gave the waitress his credit card — and she soon returned with two other waitresses in tow, each one asking for Mr. Houston’s autograph, which he graciously gave. Fame is relative, but total name-recognition gives credence to the Small World concept.

One measure of the historical Sam Houston’s contributions to Western history is that his published writings, as originally brought out by the University of Texas Press, filled eight volumes — and that in 1860, at a meeting held at the San Jacinto battlefield, he was actually suggested as a possibility for the presidency of the United States.

As did the biblical King David, Sam Houston lived seventy years: he died in 1863, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Hunstville.

( Author’s Bio ) :

 

Jeffrey Dane

 is a researcher, historian, and author whose writing on various subjects is published in the USA and abroad in several languages. His work has appeared several times on Alamo Sentry. He has been a contributor to a number of volumes, and with historian and artist Rod Timanus he co-authored a book (a publisher is currently being sought) about Texas in the 1830s.