Sam Houston and the American Southwest

This biography, part of the Library of American Biography series, traces the life of Sam Houston (1793–1863), a frontier leader whose career intersected with nearly every major event in the southwestern expansion of the United States. Houston descended from Scotch-Irish migrants in Virginia. His father, Samuel Houston, a Revolutionary War veteran, neglected the family plantation and faced bankruptcy; after Samuel died, Houston's mother moved her nine children to a farm near Maryville, Tennessee, in 1807. Young Sam showed little interest in school but memorized much of Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad. Put to work as a store clerk, he ran away at about age 16 to live with the Cherokee band of Chief Oo-loo-te-ka (John Jolly) on the Tennessee River. The Cherokees were a settled, adaptive people who farmed, intermarried with whites, and lived in structured communities. Houston learned their language, was adopted by Oo-loo-te-ka, and received the name Colonneh ("The Raven"). Over nearly three years, he developed a lasting respect for Indigenous culture and a preference for conciliation over conflict.

Houston enlisted in the U.S. Army in March 1813 and joined General Andrew Jackson's campaign against the Creek Indians in Alabama. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814, he led charges on Creek fortifications and was severely wounded. Assigned afterward to Jackson's headquarters in Nashville, he developed a lasting friendship with "Old Hickory" and served as federal subagent to the Cherokees in 1817. Feeling exploited after a clash with Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Houston resigned from the army in March 1818. He studied law, passed the bar within six months, and rose rapidly as a Jacksonian protégé, winning election to Congress in 1823 and to the governorship of Tennessee in 1827. As governor, he advocated transportation improvements and public education while managing Jackson's successful 1828 presidential campaign.

Houston's world collapsed in the spring of 1829. He had married Eliza Allen, the daughter of a wealthy planter, on January 22, but Eliza did not love him and may have been pressured into the marriage. Less than three months later, she left. Houston refused to blame his wife, resigned as governor, and traveled to rejoin Oo-loo-te-ka's band in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Among the Cherokees, he worked as an advisor, exposed fraud by government Indian agents, and married Tiana Rogers, a part-Cherokee widow, according to Indian custom. His alcohol addiction worsened severely; the Osage Indians called him "Big Drunk." He traveled twice to Washington on behalf of the Cherokees and became embroiled in a public confrontation with Congressman William Stanbery of Ohio over fraud accusations, caning Stanbery on Pennsylvania Avenue and receiving only a mild reprimand after a trial before the House of Representatives.

Houston crossed the Red River into Texas on December 2, 1832, seeking financial opportunity and a fresh start. The biography provides extensive background on Anglo-Mexican tensions: Spain's neglect of Texas, the empresario colonies established by Moses and Stephen F. Austin under generous Mexican land grants, and the cultural differences separating Anglo settlers from the Mexican government. By the mid-1830s, General Antonio López de Santa Anna had centralized power, abolished state legislatures, and suppressed resistance by force. After Austin returned from over a year of imprisonment in Mexico City in September 1835 declaring war necessary, Houston shifted from caution to active preparation.

A representative assembly elected Houston commander in chief in November 1835, but he faced an army that existed largely on paper and a fractious provisional government. A convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos declared Texas independence on March 2, 1836. Houston gathered 374 volunteers at Gonzales and, upon learning that the Alamo, a fortified former mission in San Antonio, had fallen on March 6 with all defenders killed, ordered retreat eastward. The withdrawal, known as the "Runaway Scrape," saw panicked civilians fleeing before the Mexican advance. News that James W. Fannin's 430 men had been massacred at Goliad on Santa Anna's orders fueled the army's desire for revenge. Houston resisted pressure to fight prematurely, drilling his troops while enduring fierce criticism from interim President David G. Burnet.

When Houston learned that Santa Anna had split his forces and was pursuing the Texas government with fewer than a thousand men, he marched rapidly toward Harrisburg. On April 21, at the Battle of San Jacinto, Houston's 783 men advanced through tall grass and charged, screaming "Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad." The battle lasted 18 minutes. Texans killed 630 Mexican soldiers and captured 730, at a cost of two dead and 23 wounded. Santa Anna was captured the next day. Houston refused calls for execution, knowing the prisoner was key to removing Mexican forces from Texas. Santa Anna signed an armistice ordering his armies south of the Rio Grande.

Houston won the republic's first presidential election in September 1836 and governed under dire conditions: massive debt, no diplomatic recognition, and an army demanding war with Mexico. Andrew Jackson extended diplomatic recognition on March 3, 1837, but annexation did not follow. In 1840, Houston married Margaret Lea, a young Alabama woman who persuaded him to curb his drinking and eventually join the Baptist Church. Mirabeau B. Lamar, who succeeded Houston as president in 1838, tripled the republic's debt through reckless spending and the violent expulsion of the Cherokees from East Texas. Houston won a second term in 1841, nearly balanced the budget by 1844, negotiated peace treaties with Indigenous nations, and vetoed a declaration of war when Mexico twice invaded Texas in 1842. Throughout his second presidency, he pursued annexation by playing British and American interests against each other. After a treaty failed in the U.S. Senate in June 1844, James K. Polk's expansionist presidential victory revived the effort. Congress passed a joint resolution of annexation on February 27, 1845, and President Polk signed the Texas Admission Act on December 29, 1845. At the transfer ceremony, as the Lone Star flag was lowered, Houston stepped forward and caught it in his arms.

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1846, Houston supported President Polk's Oregon policy and the Mexican War. He opposed both the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in territory taken from Mexico, and Southern talk of secession, calling disunion "a monster." He supported the Compromise of 1850, warning that "a nation divided against itself cannot stand." When Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, proposing to repeal the Missouri Compromise restriction on slavery north of 36°30' through "popular sovereignty" (allowing settlers to decide the slavery question), Houston voted against his party and section. He and John Bell of Tennessee were the only Southern senators voting no. Houston prophesied that the act would produce a free-soil president by 1860, followed by secession and war.

After losing a gubernatorial race in 1857, Houston won the governorship in 1859 as the "People's Candidate" on a platform of "the Constitution and the Union." Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860 triggered a secession crisis. The Texas secession convention voted 166 to 8 for disunion, and voters ratified the decision. When the convention required state officials to swear loyalty to the Confederacy, Houston refused, sitting in the capitol basement whittling pine while his name was called three times. The convention declared his office vacant. Houston rejected two offers of military aid from Lincoln, refusing to involve Texas in civil war. He spent his final years in declining health, his old wounds troubling him alongside a persistent cough. On July 26, 1863, as Margaret read the Bible at his bedside, Houston spoke his last words: "Texas . . . Texas . . . Margaret."

The author concludes that Houston provided leadership essential to southwestern expansion: He assured the success of the Texas Revolution, kept the republic alive, and guided it into the Union. Houston failed to prevent secession but displayed courage and prophetic wisdom virtually unmatched among Southern politicians. His defining strengths were physical and moral courage, ambition tempered by practicality, and a strategic caution that led him to resist rash action throughout his career.