Sam Houston

Can Eric Schmid Lead Sam Houston to Two FCS Championships in One Year?

Thanks to the pandemic-delayed 2020 season, the Bearkats and their star quarterback are 21–0 in 2021 and three games away from making history.

Fox Host Brian Kilmeade’s New Book About the Alamo Isn’t Fair and Balanced

The best-selling author offers a lively—but drastically incomplete—account of nineteenth-century Texas history.

An Update on the AG Race

Ken Paxton remains an alarmingly safe bet

Santa Anna’s Chamber Pot

The story behind an unusual trophy of the Texas Revolution.

Sons of Sam

Leadership is lacking in Texas. O Houston, where art thou?

North Toward Dome

The best way to visit the Capitol, the state’s grandest public building, is to take the 45-minute guided tour. But there is much more to see if you know what to look for, and I’m going to tell you precisely that.

Happy Texas Independence Day!

Today marks the 176th  anniversary of Texas' independence from Mexico.

Look away, look away

Tomorrow, February 1, is the 150th anniversary, also known as the sesquicentennial, of Texas’s secession from the Union — the worst decision ever made by leaders of this state. By 1857 the electorate had fractured along the lines of states-rights extremists and Unionists, the latter amounting to around a third

Rick Perry and the two Texases

The secession controversy generated by Rick Perry has a long history in Texas politics, going all the way back to Sam Houston and Mirabeau B. Lamar, the first and second presidents of the Republic of Texas. The two presidents had totally different visions of Texas, which persist today. Houston recognized

Mirabeau B. Lamar

Why was Mirabeau B. Lamar known as the Father of Texas Education?

Embattled

Reshooting history in Garfield

Wore Stories

For her history of Texas fashion (see “The Way We Wore”), senior editor Anne Dingus began with—who else?—Sam Houston. “He’s always a good place to start,” she says, “and he distinguished himself by being sartorially flamboyant.” Then, drawing on library research and her personal archive of vintage postcards, ads,

Let Them Read Shrake

It would be wrong to say that Bud Shrake has finished writing one third of a new novel; it’s actually an old novel, one he has been writing off and on for the past fifteen years. “It’s about love, violence, sex, and murder,” the 65-year-old Austinite explains, and is set

We Are the World

An ambitious new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston suggests Texas is becoming less like itself and more like everyplace else.

Heroes and Villains

Sam the Man

His wives! His lives! A bountiful birthday guide to Sam Houston, Texas’ ultimate hero.

House Arrest

THE HOME OF SAM HOUSTON’S WIDOW, Margaret Lea Houston, and their eight children is for sale. A shrine of Texana, the 1830’s Greek Revival classic in the tiny hamlet of Independence comes complete with a Houston family heirloom piano that is said to render a ghostly “Come to the Bower,”

Eighteen Minutes

Unlike the Alamo, which can seem as remote and mysterious as Stonehenge, the San Jacinto battlefield has few secrets. Its history lies close at hand.

Sam Houston, Warts and All

A good woman finally marries the wild frontier man and saves him from himself. Manifestly destiny.