Sam Houston, Warts and All
Texas was the end of the line for Sam Houston, an adventurer with boundless energies, deep depressions, and a mysterious past, the sort of man who could have faced down LBJ.
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President Jackson's fears about Houston's motives on the frontier were not unfounded, but Sam had more than one angle going for him. He ingratiated himself with the Osages and the Creeks and the Choctaws, and single-handedly put down an internecine war that won back Jackson's confidence. The Cherokees made Houston a member of their nation, dubbed him an ambassador and sent him to Washington to win concessions from the white man's government, and Sam did well enough for them in minor matters. He got bad Indian agents fired, for example, but he also tried to get for himself an Indian ration contract that would have been worth a million dollars. Sam Houston was probably the most enlightened white man of his day when it came to the red man, but the truth is that he used the Indians much more than he was useful to them. Time and time again, he went to them when he was down, only to leave when he got his get-up-and-go back.
"I have yet to be wronged or deceived by an Indian," he once said. "Every wound I have known was the work of those of my own blood."
But not even Tiana Rogers, the Cherokee beauty he took as a wife, could keep him happy down on the wigwam. He got to be such a drunken pain in the neck the Indians read him out of their council. He wept and told Tiana, "Go tell that you have seen Caius Marius sitting in exile among the ruins of Carthage."
When he dried out enough to travel, Houston left the Arkansas and headed for Washington to go back into public life as a white man. At the mouth of the White River, he came across two French noblemen who were traveling about the country taking notes for a book. Their names were Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, and recognizing a quality in Houston, they drew him into conversation. "You believe then, in the possibility of saving the Indians?" Houston's reply: "Yes. Without question, 25 years of skillful handling by the government would certainly produce this result."
It is hard to believe Houston was this naive about the white man's intentions, but maybe he was at the time. He was leaving the red man's world, where he had made a mess of things, and was probably priming himself for a re-entry into the East that must have been difficult. Who would take him in like a prodigal son? Why President Jackson, of course, the man who would leave a black record in Indian affairs. Jackson did not honor the terms of treaties that even he himself had drawn with the Indians, and he forced tribe after tribe to give up their lands to white settlers and move further west. Houston not only knew of, but was an instrument in, this Western resettlement. Both he and Jackson saw it as one of the side effects of "Manifest Destiny," that doctrine which drove the whittlers to the edges of the continent. Later, as an old, ineffective senator, Houston tried to divert this white man's destiny from the Indians, but it was too late.
Houston's subsequent behavior in Washington was not any better than it had been in Arkansas. He was lobbying around the town, trying to get money for his Texas adventure, when a congressman from Ohio, Rep. William Stanberry, cast a slur on his old Indian ration negotiations; whereupon Houston fell upon Stanberry in the streets and beat him with a cane. The news pleased Andrew Jackson. Stanbery was a critic of the administration. As a matter of fact the President wished "there were a dozen Houstons to beat and cudgel the members of Congress."
But Old Hickory's mood changed when Houston was cited for contempt. The House voted 149 to 25 to arrest Houston, and his trial before the galleries was the talk of the town. The president was distressed over Houston's wearing a buckskin coat, and tossed him some coins. "Don't you have any other clothes?" he roared. "Damn it, dress like a gentleman and buck up your defense." Houston went out and bought a coat "of the finest material, reaching to his knees, trousers in harmony of color and the latest style in cut, with a white satin vest to match."
The night before his summing up to the jury, Houston got drunk with some friends, which included the Speaker of the House, who was also the presiding judge. Hung over Houston was, but he rallied the next morning for a brilliant performance. He spoke for almost an hour, bringing in Greece and Rome and the Tyrannies of Caesar, Cromwell and Bonaparte. He quoted Shakespeare, Blackstone and the Apostle Paul, and a woman from the gallery threw a rose at his feet and shouted, "I had rather be Sam Houston in a dungeon than Stanberry on a throne!"
They found him guilty and sentenced him to a reprimand, which was like a love pat. Stanberry, much more serious than the rest, pressed for a criminal conviction and got it, but Houston never paid the $500 assault fine. He was on his way to Texas, with a loan from the President and status as an Indian agent, aboard a pony without a tail named Jack.
"I was dying out," he said, "and had they taken me before a justice of peace and fined me ten dollars it would have killed me; but they gave me a national tribunal for a theatre, and that set me up again."
On the Red River Houston ran into his old Arkansas friend, Elias Rector, who gave him a razor, some money and a new horse. "I accept your gift," Houston rumbled, "and mark my words. If I have good luck the razor will someday shave the chin of the President of a Republic."
Well, that's fine and dandy, and I'm glad that Sam was heading for Texas, because at 41 he was still too immature to be president of the United States.
Don't you know that Stephen F. Austin hated, just hated, to see swashbucklers like Sam Houston hit Texas? The quiet, intellectual man who would become known as "The Father of Texas" was a Mexican citizen, as were his Anglo colonists. Austin had picked them with care and they had sworn allegiance to Mexico. The last thing they wanted was independence as a republic or annexation by the United States. All they wanted from the government in Mexico City was state rights. This was the mood of the American settlers.
But Houston, after two months in Texas, reported back to President Jackson that every Mexican troop had been driven back across the border, and that Texans were twenty to one for annexation. This was a bunch of bull, and Houston had gotten it at Nacogdoches, which Austin considered to be a hotbed of insurgents and adventurers. At any rate, Austin hurried to Mexico City to try to get the new Mexican president, General Santa Anna, to agree to separate statehood for Texas and to approve a new constitution. To his astonishment, Santa Anna threw him in jail.
The news was a torch to Anglo tempers, and there were men who wanted to raise an army then and there and snatch Austin from the Mexican capital. But now, Houston, who had been priming the revolutionary fervor, became the soul of moderation. Wait, he counseled, until we are strong.
Austin cooled his heels in a Mexican jail for two years while Sam Houston went about mixing business and politics. Although he was not a Mexican citizen he put out his shingle and began to practice law. The authorities were lax about such little technicalities. But not about religion. You could not buy land unless you were Catholic, so Sam Houston became a Catholic. And he began to buy land, for himself and some of Andrew Jackson's cronies back East.
"What the devil am I out here for?" he wrote to one of his brothers. "Part, I will tell you, and the balance you may guess at. I will practice law, and with excellent prospects of success. With two other gentleman (who furnish the capital) I have purchased 140,000 acres of choice lands. Besides this I own and have paid for 10,000 acres of the most valuable land in Texas. Several minor matters I am engaged in, and if I enjoy health I will make well out of them."
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