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Sam Houston. (National Archives)
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Maj. Gen. Sam Houston
Houston's Larger-Than-Life Life Included Adoption By Cherokee, Public Office, Liberation of Texas
By Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Military.com Columnist
On Sept. 5, 1836, Sam Houston defeated Stephen F. Austin to become the first regularly elected president of the Republic of Texas. As commander-in-chief of the armies of Texas, Houston's much-publicized defeat of Gen. Antonio de Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto had won Texans their long-sought independence from Mexico, and "Old Sam Jacinto" had won their favor.
Born in Virginia, Houston and his family moved to Tennessee after his father, a Revolutionary War veteran, died when Houston was 13. In Tennessee, the rebellious young man ran off to join a Cherokee band, who christened the tall and brooding Houston "The Raven." He left the tribe at 18 to earn money and, after the War of 1812 began, enlisted in the Army as a private on March 24, 1813. Within a matter of months, he had become a commissioned officer. He joined Gen. Andrew Jackson's campaign in Alabama against the British-supplied Creek Indians. After an arrow pierced Houston's leg during the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 26, 1814, he forced a fellow officer at sword-point to pull the arrow out so he could continue fighting. Such determination and valor won him the attention of Jackson, who became his lifelong benefactor and friend.
Association with Jackson also made Houston a staunch democrat. After the war, Houston became a lawyer and was elected state attorney general, congressman and then governor of Tennessee. He then entered a period of personal difficulties, including an 11-week marriage that ended when his wife left him for reasons that the couple never revealed. The incident prompted him to resigning as governor in 1829. Houston once again made his home with his Cherokee family in what is now Oklahoma, this time for five years, during which he entered a Cherokee marriage with Diana Rogers Gentry, a woman of mixed blood (a foremother of Will Rogers). Although trying to live in seclusion and tranquility, Houston's natural energies propelled him into a position as tribal emissary to Washington, where he often appeared in native dress, to include a turban, patterned blanket, and ruffled collar.
No one knows why, in 1832, Houston chose Texas as his "land of promise," but once there, he entered the most important phase of his multifaceted career. On March 2, 1836, when the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico was issued, Houston was appointed major general and instructed to organize the new republic's military forces. He subsequently served as president, state senator, again as president, and, after U.S. statehood was granted, as U.S. senator and later governor of Texas.
His earlier great successes on the battlefield and in the statehouse were compromised, in Texans' eyes, by Gov. Houston's refusal to accept the idea of Texas seceding from the Union and becoming part of the Confederacy in 1861. Although President Lincoln offered to send federal troops to keep him in office, Houston declined to bring further violence to his adopted home, instead resigning his office and retiring to Huntsville, Texas, where he died in 1863.
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