BLAZING THE WAY Arthur M. Schlesinger, jr.

The original American Statesmen Series consisted of thirty-four titles published between 1882 and 1916. Handsomely printed and widely read, the Series made a notable contribution to the popular appreciation of American history. Its creator was John Torrey Morse, Jr., born in Boston in 1840, graduated from Harvard in 1860 and for nearly twenty restless years thereafter a Boston lawyer. In his thirties he had begun to dabble in writing and editing; and about 1880, reading a volume in John Morley's English Men of Letters Series, he was seized by the idea of a comparable set of compact, lucid and authoritative lives of American statesmen.

It was an unfashionable thought. The celebrated New York publisher Henry Holt turned the project down, telling Morse, "Who ever wants to read American history?" Houghton, Mifflin in Boston proved more receptive, and Morse plunged ahead. His intention was that the American Statesmen Series, when com-

ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.

plete, "should present such a picture of the development of the country that the reader who had faithfully read all the volumes would have a full and fair view of the history of the United States told through the medium of the efforts of the men who had shaped our national career. The actors were to develop the drama."

In choosing his authors, Morse relied heavily on the counsel of his cousin Henry Cabot Lodge. Between them, they enlisted an impressive array of talent. Henry Adams, William Graham Sumner, Moses Coit Tyler, Hermann von Hoist, Moorfield Storey and Albert Bushnell Hart were all in their early forties when their volumes were published; Lodge, E. M. Shepard and Andrew C. McLaughlin in their thirties; Theodore Roosevelt in his twenties. Lodge took on Washington, Hamilton and Webster, and Morse himself wrote five volumes. He offered the authors a choice of $500 flat or a royalty of 12.5^ on each volume sold. Most, luckily for themselves, chose the royalties.

Like many editors, Morse found the experience exasperating. "How I waded among the fragments of broken engagements, shattered pledges! I never really knew when I could count upon getting anything from anybody." Carl Schurz infuriated him by sending in a two-volume life of Henry Clay on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Morse, who had confined Jefferson,

John Adams, Webster and Calhoun to single volumes, was tempted to leave it. But Schurz threatened to publish his work simultaneously if Morse commissioned another life of Clay for the Series; so Morse reluctantly surrendered.

When a former Confederate colonel, Allan B. Magruder, offered to do John Marshall, Morse, hoping for "a good Virginia atmosphere," gave him a chance. The volume turned out to have been borrowed in embarrassing measure from Henry Flanders's Lives and Times of the Chief Justices. For this reason, Magruder's Marshall is not included in the Chelsea House reissue of the Series; Albert J. Beveridge's famous biography appears in its stead. Other classic biographies will replace occasional Series volumes: John Marshall's Life of George Washington in place of Morse's biography; essays on John Adams by John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, also substituting for a Morse volume; and Henry Adams's Life of Albert Gallatin instead of the Series volume by John Austin Stevens.

"I think that only one real blunder was made," Morse recalled in 1931, "and that was in allotting [John] Randolph to Henry Adams." Half a century earlier, however, Morse had professed himself pleased with Adams's Randolph. Adams, responding with characteristic self-deprecation, thought the "acidity" of

ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.

his account "much too decided" but blamed the "excess of acid" on the acidulous subject. The book was indeed hostile but nonetheless stylish. Adams also wrote a life of Aaron Burr, presumably for the Series. But Morse thought Burr no statesman, and on his advice, to Adams's extreme irritation, Henry Houghton of Houghton, Mifflin rejected the manuscript. "Not bad that for a damned bookseller!" said Adams. "He should live for a while at Washington and know our real statesmen." Adams eventually destroyed the work, and a fascinating book was lost to history.

The definition of who was or was not a "statesman" caused recurrent problems. Lodge told Morse one day that their young friend Theodore Roosevelt wanted to do Gouverneur Morris. "But, Cabot," Morse said, "you surely don't expect Morris to be in the Series! He doesn't belong there." Lodge replied, "Theodore . . . needs the money/' and Morse relented. No one objected to Thomas Hart Benton, Roosevelt's other contribution to the Series. Roosevelt turned out the biography in an astonishing four months while punching cows and chasing horse thieves in the Badlands. Begging Lodge to send more material from Boston, he wrote that he had been "mainly evolving [Benton] from my inner consciousness; but when he leaves the Senate in 1850 I

have nothing whatever to go by. ... I hesitate to give him a wholly fictitious date of death and to invent all the work of his later years." In fact, T.R. had done more research than he pretended; and for all its defects, his Benton has valuable qualities of vitality and sympathy.

Morse, who would chat to Lodge about "the aristocratic upper crust in which you & I are imbedded," had a fastidious sense of language. Many years later, in the age of Warren G. Harding, he recommended to Lodge that the new President find someone "who can clothe for him his 'ideas' in the language customarily used by educated men." At dinner in a Boston club, a guest commented on the dilemma of the French ambassador who could not speak English. "Neither can Mr. Harding," Morse said. But if patrician prejudice improved Morse's literary taste, it also impaired his political understanding. He was not altogether kidding when he wrote Lodge as the Series was getting under way, "Let the Jeffersonians & the Jacksonians beware! I will poison the popular mind!!"

Still, for all its fidelity to establishment values, the American Statesmen Series had distinct virtues. The authors were mostly from outside the academy, and they wrote with the confidence of men of affairs. Their books are

ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.

generally crisp, intelligent, spirited and readable. The Series has long been in demand in secondhand bookstores. Most of its volumes are eminently worth republication today, on their merits as well as for the vigorous expression they give to an influential view of the American past.

Born during the Presidency of Martin Van Buren, John Torrey Morse, Jr., died shortly after the second inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937. A few years before his death he could claim with considerable justice that his Series had done "a little something in blazing the way" for the revival of American historical writing in the years to come.

New York May, 1980

BOOK ONE

R OMAN CE

"Two classes of people pursued Sam Houston all his life— artists and women."

—Miss Anne Hanna, a belle of Old Nashville.

THE RAVEN

CHAPTER I

. One Swoed, $15"

The vessel seemed off her course, and the crew grumbled about its work while a troubled landsman paced the quarterdeck. The Captain was below in irons, the passengers on their knees in the waist thanking God that matters were no worse— which easily might have been. But for a chance discovery and a bold plan carried boldly through, who could say what should have been their fate at the hands of the wicked mariner to whom they had entrusted their lives and their fortunes?

The fortunes were at the root of the trouble. At Belfast too many kegs of gold sovereigns had gone on board under the meditative eye of the Master. It was uncommon for emigrants to be so well fixed. Half-seas-over the situation got the best of the Skipper. But his buccaneering plot was found out, and the passengers overwhelmed the ringleaders and took charge of the ship. One of their number said he understood enough navigation to bring her into Philadelphia.

That had happened eight days ago, and a landfall was overdue. But prayer fortified the voyagers' spirits, and surely enough, before the day was out, a seaman cried, "Land ho!" and the South River capes spread into view.

When the ship came to berth a thick-set man in middle life, with silver buckles on his shoes, stepped ashore with his mother, his wife and six children. The family of "John Houston, Gent.," descendants of baronets, whose ancestors were in the company of Scottish archers that led the way for Jeanne d'Arc from Orleans to Reims, stood on the wharf and saw their keg of sovereigns safely on the soil of the New World, in the year 1730. 1

2

Twenty-four years later Gentleman John could have looked back on a span of life extraordinary for its success at colonial endeavor. He had tarried in Pennsylvania long enough to marry off young John, his son, and two daughters. Then the tide of Scotch-Irish immigration streaming southward had swept him up and set him down in the upper Valley of Virginia among the Stuarts and the McCorkles, the Paxtons, Davidsons, Montgomerys, McCormicks and McClungs. He had become one of the first citizens of the new Presbyterian commonwealth beyond the Blue Ridge, at which the Episcopalian aristocracy of the Tidewater was beginning to cease to tilt its nose. His lands were extensive and he had been among the first to import negroes across the mountains—not without a twitch of his nonconformist conscience in the beginning, perhaps, for until then the rougher tasks had been undertaken by indentured white servants who were slaves but temporarily. He had built roads that exist to this day and a stone church in which Valley folk still worship. He had administered the King's justice as a magistrate and fought the French and the Indians.

At the age of sixty-five, rich and honored, he continued the pioneer. He was clearing a new field, and when something went wrong, Squire John stepped under a tree that was afire to give an order. A great limb fell, pinning him to the earth. When his servants reached him John Houston, Gentleman, the founder of an American family, was dead.

3

Squire John's son, Robert, had married one of the well-to-do Davidson girls and established himself on the Timber Ridge Plantation. There Robert built a fine house (though aristocratic Tidewater would not have thought it much), with a two-story gallery supported by square columns. He could sit on his gallery and look down the rows of locust and maple trees he had planted along the driveway that joined the main road to Lexington. He could extend his field of vision for a long way down the Valley, and much of what he saw he owned.

The Valley had prospered and begun to lose some of the rawness and severity that irritated the Tidewater. It built better houses and made a beginning at the art of living according to what was already a Virginia tradition. But on the whole Tidewater remained unimpressed and was disposed to regard the Valley as a barbarous region where gentlemen worked with their hands and a man might be put in jail for skipping church service.

Tidewater's criticisms do not appear to have disturbed Robert Houston, who was not the kind to borrow trouble. When his work was caught up, he could enjoy his breeze-swept gallery or a court-day excursion to Lexington, the county-seat, seven miles away, to hear the news. Perhaps he heard, and passed an opinion on the fact, that William Gray had been presented to the grand jury for driving a wagon on Sunday, and that Charles Given was complaining to the authorities that his left ear had been bitten off by Francis McDonald.

Yes, the court-house was the place to go for the news: Judith Ryley accused of killing her bastard child. . . . Nat, an Indian boy, complains that he is held in slavery by the rich Widow Greenlee. . . . John Moore presented for staying away from public worship. . . . Elizabeth Berry sentenced to receive twenty-five lashes on the bare back for stealing a shirt of Margaret McCassell. . . . Malcomb McCown indicted for the murder of Cornstalk and three other Indians;

no prosecution. Malcomb McCown suspected of stealing a horse; to jail without bail. . . . Sam Jack presented for saying "God damn the Army to hell." 2

General Washington's Army was the one Sam Jack had in mind. This made the transgression a grievous one, offending the Deity and the cause of freedom as well. Upper-crust Tidewater had its share of Tories, but the Valley was for "independency" almost to a man. Mr. Jack was fined fifty pounds and sentenced to spend twenty-four hours in jail, which Robert Houston doubtless felt was no less than he deserved. For Robert was a rebel—and had a boy in the war.

Samuel Houston, the son of Robert, liked the military life and came home a captain in Morgan's Rifle Brigade, the most celebrated corps in the Continental Army. When his father died, Captain Houston got the Timber Ridge place. He married Elizabeth, a daughter of Squire John Paxton, one of Rockbridge County's richest men. The new mistress of Timber Ridge was tall and handsome. She was counted a lady—almost in the Tidewater manner.

The war had brought wonderful changes to the Colonies, and some of these had reached the sheltered Valley. Captain Houston, for one, had traveled and learned to prefer the easy life and cavalier tone of the seaboard. With his inheritance, and a rich wife, he felt in a position to order his life to conform to his new ideas. He decided to embrace the profession of arms as a career. It was a gentleman's occupation.

Consequently the Captain remained in the military establishment, the State establishment, with appointment as brigadier inspector, which was the utmost Virginia could do toward providing professional standing for an officer of militia. But it suited Captain Houston, who gravely pursued his uneventful rounds for twenty-three years—which is a long time to sustain an illusion.

ONE SWORD, $15"

Ten of these years had gone by when one day the Captain rode home in haste. It was late February and the last ascending curve of the Plank Road from Lexington lifted the rangy outlines of the homestead on the hill against a sunless background of sky and valley. On the maple and locust trees a few buds put forth their points shyly as if committing an indiscretion. The Captain crossed the two-story gallery, turned the small, burnished, brass door-knob and stepped briskly within.

All was well and he had arrived in time—in good time, for not until the second day of March, in 1793, was the baby born. It was the fifth that had blessed the union of Samuel and Elizabeth Houston and, like the others, a boy. Captain Houston gave his own name, Samuel, to the little fellow and posted away again, the hoofs of his saddle horse drumming on the great puncheons of the Plank Road an axiom of the trade of arms. It is hard for a soldier to have any home life.

The black nurse girl, Peggy, took charge of Sam, which enabled Mistress to resume supervision of the plantation sooner than otherwise.

6

When Sam was three his brother William was born. A year later a baby sister came. That was an event. Six boys and then a girl. They named her Mary. She was Sam's favorite, and grew up to be a great belle who lived bravely and died tragically. When Sam was Hxe there was another girl— Isabelle. Two years after that, in 1800, the turn of the century brought Elizabeth Paxton her ninth child, christened Eliza Ann. In 1803 instead of another baby, the household at Timber Ridge was thrilled by the Louisiana Purchase and Papa's promotion to major. Then, presently, a war with Spain was spoken of.

Sam Houston had attained his eleventh year, one of six brothers and three sisters who rode horseback, swam in Mill Creek, hunted in the woods, and as Sam afterward recalled, slew Redcoats and Redskins impartially, with father's second best sword. The cream of juvenile society in the Valley was theirs. They visited at Cousin Matthew Houston's, near High Bridge, which is now called Natural Bridge. Cousin Matthew's house was then as now a show place of the region, reckoned as grand, indeed, as Mr. Jefferson's Monticello and, unlike Monti-cello, maintained without bankrupting its proprietor. They visited at Cousin Samuel Houston's, saw his wheat-cutting machine and heard the inventor discourse on the Greek and Latin classics. Cousin Samuel expected to make a fortune with his reapers. He might have done so had not Cyrus Mc-Cormick, the son of another Rockbridge County planter, who was always tinkering at his father's forge, fashioned a better machine for cutting wheat.

Sam and his brothers and sisters went to church every Sunday—the stone Timber Ridge Church, a hundred yards from the homestead, a monument to the pious initiative of their great grandfather and to the women who had brought sand for the mortar in their saddle-bags from South River. They went to school in a building of logs that stood a short distance from the church. Major Houston had donated forty acres of land and with a few neighbors started the school.

Sam was a poor student and a truant. He preferred his father's library to the classroom, and was often stretched with a book before the white five-foot-high mantel that lent brightness and charm to the somber walnut-paneled living-room at Timber Ridge. 3 The book might have been Brook's Gazetteer or one of the eight volumes of Rollin's Ancient History, And not improbably, in his explorations of the family copy of Morse's Geography, the boy's fingers wandered over a nebulous representation of "Tejas"—for the Spanish war talk had touched the routine of life at Timber Ridge.

Expresses from the West indicated that Kentucky and

Tennessee accepted the early coming of hostilities as one of the few certainties of life on a frontier. The Virginia militia was stirred. Never had the Major been busier with his inspections. The gravity of matters left little time for personal affairs. Perhaps this was a relief, for the Major's personal affairs were not a pleasant topic to consider. Timber Ridge was feeling the effect of a military career. The cash accumulations of two thrifty generations had been spent. A sizable inheritance from Mrs. Houston's father was gone. Slaves had been sold off, and then land—a parcel here and a parcel there, and some lots in Lexington. But with a war on the horizon a soldier puts selfish thoughts aside. Timber Ridge was still a valuable property and sufficient, with economies, to keep the family until the public crisis was over.

This crisis hinged—and with it Major Houston's expectations of a call to the field of honor—somewhat on the outcome of the designs of Aaron Burr, although no one knew, or has since found out, what those designs were. Colonel Burr had a way of keeping his projects flexible. They seemed to comprehend anything from a colonization scheme in the Spanish province of Tejas, to the seizure of New Orleans, the alienation of the Mississippi Valley, the conquest of Mexico and the coronation of Aaron I as emperor of the Southwest against a twinkling background of orders of nobility and star and garters. One paid his money and took his choice.

In any event, a part of the program was war with Spain, which the West was hot for, and therefore hot for the Burr business under the notion that it was somehow an instrument for hastening the humiliation of the dons and snatching a slice of territory in the bargain. Ohio and Kentucky were delirious with patriotic intentions. In Tennessee a lean backwoods lawyer named Andrew Jackson awaited a signal to rally two thousand frontiersmen and swarm southwestward. Western Virginia was on the qui vive.

In the summer of 1806 the flatboat flotilla that was to convey Burr and the vanguard of his "colonists" to their adven-

ture was loading on the Ohio and on the Cumberland. Young Samuel Swartwout, of New York, rode through Virginia bound for the tropical Sabine. In his saddle-bag was a cipher message signed by Aaron Burr. That message got young Mr. Swartwout in jail and helped to encourage Mr. Jefferson's zeal to hang Mr. Burr. Consequently, no colonization of the Washita, no Emperor Aaron, or star and garters, or war with Spain. A little sheepishly the taken-in West turned to other forms of entertainment. The experience was also a lesson to young Mr. Swartwout.

Sam Houston was thirteen years old when the Burr bubble burst, and the Major, his father, was left free to resume the interrupted consideration of his personal affairs. There was much to consider. Timber Ridge was bankrupt. The Major was past fifty, and his health had begun to fail. A reckoning was on the way.

The old militiaman met the crisis with soldier-like poise. He made a plan. He would resign his commission and leave Virginia which had set the stamp of failure on his affairs. He and his would remove to Tennessee, a new country shimmering with the prospects that far fields almost infallibly display before the impaired in fortune.

The West tugged like a magnet. On the seaboard from Maine to Georgia waves of men were on the move. Few had rolled farther, or gathered as much moss with each roll, than a certain Connecticut Yankee, as astute as he was restless. Moses Austin had tried Pennsylvania and Virginia. Now he was in Missouri working lead mines in a wilderness, and listening with a shrewd squint to the tales trappers and traders brought from beyond the Sabine. Already Moses Austin's roving eye was on Texas. With him was a son named Stephen, born in Virginia the same year Sam Houston was.

The reckoning that was on the way never quite overtook

Major Houston. In September of 1806 he sold for a thousand pounds what was left of the Timber Ridge plantation. The Major was ill, but duty called and he rode away on his last tour of military inspections, dying at Dennis Callighan's friendly tavern house on the New Road to Kentucky. A large turnout of Valley gentility saw him buried in the High Bridge churchyard, near the elaborate mansion of Cousin Matthew.

"One sword," noted the executors in their appraisal of the estate, "one sword, $15. . . .

"One Negro Woman named Peggy aged 27 years $166.66 One Negro Woman named Lucy aged 17 years 250 One negro boy Jerry 13 years 250 One negro Boy a child named Andrew 2 years 40 one do a Boy named David 10 months 20 one iron grey mare 90 . . . One Riding Chair and Harness 55 . . . One red cow 10 . . . One womans sadle bridle and martingale 20 one mans sadle Plated stirup 17 . . . One card table $6.50 three tea boards $3 One bottle case & contents 4 . . . One umbrella $2 . . . One pistol 50 ... 2 turkey coun-terpins $7. Nine sheets $.50 . . . Morse's Geography 2 vol 6.50 . . . Sundry bonds and notes amounting to 1468.20" and other items sufficient to fill two sheets of foolscap and foot up to $3,659.86.*

Riding chair, card table, tea boards, wine set, bed linen, eight saddles—relics of a Virginia gentleman who had seen better days. Still, thirty-six hundred dollars was no trifling inheritance. But debts took a large part of this residue.

8

Fearing he might not live to conduct his family to the promised land, the Major had taken steps to outwit the hand of death. In the closing weeks of his life he had opened negotiations for a grant of land in East Tennessee, and had inserted in his will a clause directing his executors to set aside "as much as they may actually find nessery ... to Enable . . . [the family] to move with convenience." Two-

thirds of what was left "is to be applied to purchase land . . . and such articles as may be needful" for the family's "support until they can be otherwise provided for." The remaining third was "to be at the disposal of my wife" with the injunction that having made the move "shee is to apply as much of the property of horses and other things which they will require in Moving to the purchase of [additional] Lands, [which] shal be divided at the deceas of my wife ... in the following manner, to my son John two shares and to my other children one share each."

Western land. * Sell the horses, the wagons that took you— and buy more land and be rich. Major Houston had imbibed the spirit of his age. Almost his last purchase had been a new "waggon with chain and gears compleat for five horses [$] 174." Fourteen-year-old Sam (calculated the Major) should ride in this wagon and have for his own a tenth part of the greater legacy that lay where the rainbow dipped in the southwestern sky.

CHAPTER II Deer Tracks and Tapi

In the spring of 1807 a Virginia widow more accustomed to her own riding chair than an immigrant wagon, however new, took her place behind a five-horse team. The five-horse team, followed by a four-horse team and an older wagon, moved out on the road from Lexington that threaded the green Allegheny passes and descended into the wilderness of Tennessee. The widow was in her fiftieth year. Her hair was iron gray. Her tall form had grown matronly from bearing the nine children who shared the two wagons with the remainder of the worldly possessions of this reduced gentlewoman.

In three weeks the little procession passed through the collection of log houses known as Knoxville, the village capital of Tennessee. They forded a river and continued southwest-ward over an old Indian trace. Fifteen miles farther, they forded a creek by a grist mill that stood inside a stockade. Climbing the steep bank on the farther side, the travel-stained outfit creaked into the midst of another collection of houses, strung along either side of the trace. This collection was smaller and ruder than the one called Knoxville. Logs were unsquared and windows hung with shutters that would turn an arrow or stop a musket ball. This was Maryville, the seat of government of Blount County.

The ten miles beyond Maryville were the worst of the trip. The country got wilder and rougher. The trace was a poor excuse for a road. More streams to ford ar\3l x»teep banks

dense with underbrush to worry the wagons up and down. Up the Baker's Creek Valley and then up a branch stream that tumbled down from the hills, they worked their way over no road at all until the Big Smoky Mountains rose into view. Their journey was ended. Elizabeth Houston had fulfilled the dying wish of her husband. On the Baker's Creek branch she patented four hundred and nineteen acres that had been his personal selection.

Sam Houston seldom spoke of his father, whom he remembered "only for one passion, a military life." But his mother was "a heroine ... an extraordinary woman . . • gifted with intellectual and moral qualities, which elevated her . . . above most of her sex. Her life shone with purity and benevolence, and yet she was nerved with a stern fortitude^ which never gave way in the midst of the wild scenes that chequered the history of the frontier settler." 1

2

East Tennessee was filling up rapidly, but the arrival of the widow and her band was probably something of an event because of the local prestige of the Houston name. James and John Houston, cousins of the Major, had come out directly from the Army at the close of the Revolutionary War. There was no such place as Tennessee then. The country was a part of North Carolina. Reverend Samuel Houston, Greek scholar and unsuccessful inventor, had been there off and on. He had joined picturesque John Sevier and his resolute wife, Bonny Kate, in founding the State of Franklin. Though stonily ignored by the other commonwealths of our Federal Union, the State of Franklin for three stirring years maintained behind the long hunting rifles of its sponsors a sovereignty that paved the way for the creation of Tennessee.

When this was accomplished Blount County sent James Houston to the Legislature. Jim Houston of Jim Houston's Fort was a power in those clearings. Jim Houston's Fort—

Houston Blockhouse on old maps—was on Nine Mile Creek five miles from the spot Elizabeth Houston picked for the site of her homestead. As likely as not, Mrs. Houston and her flock put up at Cousin Jim's while the new home was being built, and there young Sam got a foreshadow of the life in store for him.

At Cousin Jim's the boy would have found himself behind a stockade enclosing the Houston residence, slave quarters and outbuildings. Jim Houston's Fort had turned back more than one Indian attack, but the last good fight had been nineteen years ago, with no serious scare for ten years. In that time a restless Paxton, Elizabeth's blood cousin, had made his way to Tennessee, and he and a Houston had married into the same family there. ' The blockhouse families were all intermarrying. Montgomery, Wallace, McClung, Stuart and other Rockbridge County names gave a feeling of familiarity to the countryside.

The adventure touched Sam Houston's passion for the heroic. Forty years later the recollection of it moved him to complain that American authors need not turn for inspiration to "European castles and their crazy knights and lady loves," but should "set themselves to work to glean the unwritten legends of heroism and adventure which the old men would tell them who are now smoking their pipes around the rooftrees of Kentucky and Tennessee."

But for Sam the romantic part of the migration ended when the new house on the Baker's Creek branch was finished and the family moved in and began to clear the farm. Of Elizabeth Houston's six sons, Sam seemed to take after his father the most in one respect: his talents did not incline to agriculture. Frontier farming was an occupation involving much commonplace labor in order to eat not any too well. Sam perceived flaws in this scheme. Nor did he share the frontier's opinion of contempt for the Indians, who got along comfortably by hunting and fishing, and when let alone by the whites, seemed to have a good enough time.

To what extent Sam's ideas were influenced by a book he was reading one can only guess. The book was Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, But there is no guesswork in the assertion that Sam's views were not accepted by the other members of the household. They went to work on the new four hundred acres. From the start they prospered better than most settlers. They bought slaves. They acquired an interest in a general store in Maryville. They enlarged the family residence.

The house stood near a cool mountain spring on a shelf of land sloping away in three directions, before which lay a magnificent sweep of mountain scenery. When he grew up and got into politics, Sam used to speak of his boyhood Tennessee home as a cabin, but the neighbors thought it a fine house, for it had an up-stairs, which in that day was a mark of splendor. 2

By the terms of Major Houston's will, the Tennessee venture was a joint undertaking in which Sam originally enjoyed a ten per cent, interest. A few years after the family's arrival Paxton, the eldest boy, died. Death also took Isabelle. Sam's share was then one-eighth, and affairs were prospering. The ralue of his holding increased with the rest. This was because everybody worked—but Sam.

He was a likable culprit, though, and the handsomest of Elizabeth Houston's sons—fair and tall, with wavy chestnut hair and friendly blue eyes that looked from a head full of droll humor and long words he saw in books; in fact, a hard boy to scold. He would disappear for days—usually with a book, but the stories that came drifting back were often difficult to reconcile with the pursuit of literature. There were reproofs from Mother which Sam took with his tongue in his cheek, but the bossing by his brothers stirred him to rebellion.

At length it was conceded that Sam was not cut out to be a planter, and so he was placed behind the counter of the store in Maryville. Here Brother James also acquired his early merchandising experience and lived to become a success-

ful shopkeeper in Nashville. But Sam gave promise of no such satisfactory future. His lapses increased, and he got the name of a wayward boy.

3

The conquest of the wilderness was not without its frivolities. At the taverns and ordinaries the bloods rolled dice and played with dirty cards. No cock-fight, wedding, log-rolling, dance or funeral was complete without whisky. There was a startling number of illegitimate children—if one included Indian and negro half-breeds, which one did not, of course. There were two kinds of liquor. "Whisky" was the native distillation of the native corn, price thirty-five cents a gallon. "Red whisky" came from the western, or "whisky," counties of Pennsylvania; this was the refreshment of the quality. To kill an Indian was a public-spirited act; to swindle one, the exercise of common sense.

The beau ideal of this frontier was Andrew Jackson. He had been a United States senator, a militia general and a judge. He had killed a man in a duel. He gave the old-timers smoking under the rooftrees plenty to talk about. A contemporary anecdote, somewhat apocryphal but not so much so as to give a false idea of the man or of his times, has Jackson holding court in a log house when a drunken bad man armed with a club, a knife and a gun started a row and defied the sheriff to arrest him. "This court is adjourned for ten minutes," said Judge Jackson, drawing a pistol. He collared the disturber in less time than that.

Reverend Peter Cartwright approached his ecclesiastical responsibilities with no less elan. "They came drunk," he wrote, "and armed with dirks, clubs, knives, and horsewhips, and swore they would break up the meeting. ... I advanced toward them. . . . One of them made a pass at my head with his whip, but I closed in with him, and jerked him off his seat. A regular scuffle ensued. ... I threw my prisoner

down, and held him fast. . . . An old and drunken magistrate came up to me, and ordered me to let my prisoner go. I told him I should not. He swore if I did not he would knock me down. I told him to crack away. . . . The drunken justice made a pass at me; but I parried the stroke, and seized him by the collar and the hair of the head . . . brought him to the ground and jumped on him. . . . The mob then rushed to the scene; they knocked down several preachers and others. . . . The ringleader . . . made three passes at me. ... It seemed at that moment I had not power to resist temptation, and I struck a sudden blow in the burr of the ear." 3

Still, for a dreaming boy with a passion for pagan poetry, this life lacked something.

4

Sam Houston liked a good time as well as the next one, but after all that has been said on this subject he does not seem to have made the most of his early opportunities. Sixty years later a proud Tennessee grandmother said in her fireside reminiscences that he had no "small or mean vices." Sam himself allays our worst fears with the grave assurance that his youth "was wild and impetuous, but it was spotted by no crime."*

The family, however, expected more of Sam than this and was supported by an authority that spoke from the grave. "I give and bequaith," Major Houston had written in his will, "unto my son John my sword . . . and my appearil." John also received a riding horse and two shares in the Tennessee venture to one share apiece for Sam and the other children. But John was to earn that horse and extra share. "He is to pay strict attention to my family and Endeavor to see them raised and treated with Justice. My executors are to be the gardians of my children until they shal arive at lawful age and I would recommend that they put my sons to such trades

as may seem most beneficial—and I do appoint as Executors . . . my wife Elizabeth and my sons James and John."

Something more than moral suasion was provided to enforce these stipulations. "If any dispute shal arise respecting the Executing of the above . . . the court in the county wherein the majority of the legatees shal reside shal have power to appoint five men who shal put a construction on the same . . . which shal be the final decision." But Sam saw a simpler way. One morning he did not show up for work at the store.

Weeks passed, and there was a great search and stir. Finally the family heard that its black sheep had crossed the Tennessee River into the Indian country and was living with the Cherokees. James and John went to bring him back. They were directed to the wigwam of the chief.

Chief Oo-loo-te-ka's personal seat and the council house of his band were on an island that parts the current of the Tennessee where the yellow Hiwassee boils into it from the Big Smokies. The brothers paddled up to find the runaway lying under a tree, scanning lines of the Iliad. He was invited to return home. Sam relates that he stood "straight as an Indian," and (with a creditable touch of Cherokee imagery for a beginner) replied that he "preferred measuring deer tracks to tape" and "the wild liberty of the Red Men better than the tyranny of his own brothers." He begged to be excused from saying more as "a translation from the Greek" claimed his interest and he desired to "read it in peace." He got his wish.

But when the brothers left they thought that Sam would follow them home. Sam did follow, though not for more than a year. His mother and sisters were scandalized by his wild appearance. They made him a new suit of clothes, but this outward sign of respectability had slight influence on the deportment of the prodigal. "Ordered ..." runs the record

of the Blount County Court under date of September 29, 1810, "that John B. Cusack be fined Ten Dollars & Samuel Houston Five Dollars for . . . disorderly riotously wantonly with an Assembly of Militia Annoying the Court with the noise of a Drum and with force preventing the Sheriff and Officer of the Court in the discharge of his duty . . . against the peace and dignity of the State." 5

This is the earliest public notice of the military prowess of a man whose sword was to alter the destiny of a continent. The occasion was a muster of the Mounted Gunmen, the local militia company of which John B. Cusack (or Cusick) was captain. At these musters there was always whisky on tap and a good deal of horse-play at the finish. Neither Captain Cusack nor Drummer Houston paid his fine, however, and at the next term of court the penalties were remitted. Drummer Houston was not on hand to receive this absolution. He had disappeared again and did not return until after another year's absence. On this occasion Mother provided a suit of homespun as before and Sam promised to stay. Very shortly, however, he fell out with his brothers and was off for his third year with the Indians.

Chief Oo-loo-te-ka adopted Sam as a son and christened him Co-lon-neh—The Raven. The name was a revered one, with associations in Cherokee mythology. It was borne also by a neighboring chieftain who sat with Oo-loo-te-ka on the National Council of the Cherokee Nation. Sam liked the change—a new name and a new life; new sights, new sounds, new occupations, new ideas communicated by a new language with which he became daily more familiar. The young braves taught him the green corn dance, the hoop and pole game and the ball play.

The Indian ball play is the father of lacrosse. It was the national pastime of the Cherokees and had a religious significance proceeding from the nebula of tribal mythology dealing with the days when only animals inhabited the earth. From the lips of the shamans, or priests, The Raven heard the sacred

lyrics of the first ball play, which was between the birds, led by an eagle, and the beasts, led by a bear. The birds won a spirited contest through the dexterity of the flying squirrel and of the bat, whose services had been rejected by the animals. The history of that game is a long one, wonderful with detail and allusion to the meshwork of myth that forms the background of Cherokee theology. It opened the door to the Cherokee spirit world, where Sam perceived the existence of more and quite as extraordinary gods as dwelled on Olympus. Behind the fantastic conception lay a range of thought and imagination frequently as lofty as that of Greek invention, though the simple imagery of the shamans exhibited few of the ornaments of style so treasured by Mr. Pope.

Sam preferred these diversions to those of the gilded youth on the civilized side of the Tennessee. He reveled in the wealth of legend with which Cherokee life abounded. The earth and the air, the trees and the streams were peopled by the supernatural, all with their curious histories. In the evenings Sam sat about the fires where the long pipe was passed, filling his mind with the maxims of the headmen and the picturesque idioms of the Indian speech, which time never eradicated from his vocabulary.

Oo-loo-te-ka was the head of a contented following of nearly three hundred Cherokees—a large constituency, Indian bands having been much smaller than most white people suppose. They lived by hunting and by fishing and on corn cultivated by their women. Oo-loo-te-ka was about forty-five years old. He was not a warlike chieftain. His name means He-Puts-the-Drum-Away. He had more brains than most local chiefs but, at this time of life, little ambition. Membership on the National Council was a genuine distinction, but Oo-loo-te-ka found the journey to the grand council house in Georgia too great an exertion to draw him very often from the comforts of his island home, his squaws, and the affairs of his own band which he administered with more than ordinary skill. Some of Oo-loo-te-ka's success, however, must be at-

tributed to his brother-in-law and headman, John Rogers, who was part Scot. Headman Rogers had two wives and many children, including two boys named, singularly enough, John and James. They were The Raven's fast friends.

Such were the unconscious preceptors of an imaginative boy who had forsaken a disorderly civilization to find tranquillity in the camps of decorous barbarians. These years were a permanent influence on Sam Houston's life. They left him with an attachment for the wilderness, a deep interior preference for deer tracks to tape, and a faith in primitive fellowships that one day was to break the impact of a world tumbling about his ears, and whip him into the desperate improvisation of the Texas epic.

"It was the moulding period of life," he wrote, "when the heart, just charmed into the feverish hopes and dreams of youth, looks wistfully around on all things for light and beauty—'when every idea of gratification fires the blood and flashes on the fancy—when the heart is vacant to every fresh form of delight, and has no rival engagements to draw it from the importunities of a new desire.' The poets of Europe, fancying such scenes, have borrowed their sweetest images from the wild idolatry of the Indian maiden." 9

The Raven knew the warm touch of delights that captivated these worshipers from afar. But the hearts of the wild idolatrous maidens were not to be possessed without assistance from the gods, who must be petitioned in proper form. In the first place it was necessary to dispose of any possible rival. "Now your soul fades away. Your spirit shall grow less and less and dwindle away, never to reappear." If the gods were willing to accommodate in this matter the next step was to influence the girl. "Let her be completely veiled in loneliness. O Black Spider, may you hold her soul in your web, so that she may never escape its meshes." Then the final declaration to the desired one thus involved. "Your soul has come into the very center of my soul, never to turn away." 7

This was the way of the school in which Sam Houston

learned to practise the arts of courtship, "wandering," he wrote, "along the banks of streams, side by side with some Indian maiden, sheltered by the deep woods . . . making love and reading Homer's Iliad" Enchanted island.

Thirty-seven years later a man to whom few illusions remained lingered over the memories of his youth in a Pan's garden. "Houston," he said, speaking of himself in the third person, as he frequently did, which is another Indian trait, "Houston has seen nearly all in life there is to live for and yet he has been heard to say that when he looks back over the waste . . . there's nothing half so sweet to remember as this sojourn he made among the untutored children of the forest." 8

CHAPTER in

White Pantaloons and Waistcoats

Sam acknowledged the hospitality of the island by occasional trips to Maryville and to Kingston to buy powder and shot and "little articles of taste or utility" for his Indian friends and sweethearts. Purchasing on credit, at the end of three years he owed a hundred dollars. In the spring of 1812 The Raven left the wigwam of Oo-loo-te-ka to pay the fiddler.

It was not an easy thing in normal times for a youth of nineteen with an attitude of reserve toward labor to lay hands on a hundred dollars. In the spring of 1812 times were abnormal, which made it still more difficult. The air was full of war talk. Now it was England the West wanted to fight. The East was against it, and this made the West more bloodthirsty than ever. The Mounted Gunmen were mustering often. Sam's brother, Robert, had joined the Regular Army.

Sam loafed about Maryville and made known his need of employment. Maryville contained forty families now and was a place of importance. Two stage routes crossed there: one from the Carolinas to Nashville, and one from Georgia to Knoxville. The horses were changed at Russell's Inn. They were shod at Samuel Houston's blacksmith shop which stood at the fork of the roads. Mr. Houston's residence was in front of his shop. The firm of Love & Toole made saddles, but the partners had their individual enterprises. Sam Love built beaver hats for gentlemen, such as Jim Houston, of Jim Houston's Fort, and Reverend Mark Moore,

PANTALOONS AND WAISTCOATS 25

head teacher at the Academy. William Toole had a tan-yard on the edge of town. There were four general stores. The largest building in the town was the court-house where John Houston was clerk of the court. Back of the court-house was the jail and a pair of stocks. Across Pistol Creek was John Craig's grist mill.

Sam probably could have found work had he been willing to take anything. Brother James was clerking in the store his mother was interested in. But Sam was discriminating— and entertaining as well. What Sam Houston would do next was occasion for a great deal of spoofing, but Sam did not mind. It was a form of advertising. Presently Sam announced that he would open a private school.

This was the best joke in a long while. Sam tolerated a good many pleasantries about his "degree" from the "Indian University," and enjoyed himself thoroughly. True, Sam's formal schooling amounted to little. He had taken slight advantage of the excellent opportunities that Major Houston had provided for his children; but he read every book within his reach; he had spelled down half of Blount County; he could recite from memory the best part of all twenty-four books of the Iliad. These claims to scholarship Maryville did not take lightly. Moreover, before carrying Homer off among the Indians, there had been a term at Porter Academy.

Porter Academy—or, rather, "The Academy," since it was the only one in that part of the country—occupied a two-story log house in a meadow just off Main Street. There were about twenty students. Classes were kept the year round with one three-week vacation in the spring and another in the fall. The summer hours were from eight to twelve in the forenoon and from two to five-thirty in the afternoon. During the winter when the light was poorer the hours were from nine to twelve and from one to four. "No student," said the regu-

lations of Sam Houston's day, "shall get drunk, or be admitted to play at cards or other games of hazard. . . . No student shall use profane, irreverent or obscene language or be guilty of conduct tending thereunto. . . . No student shall attend a horse race, a ball, or other frolicking assembly. . . . No student shall be guilty of fighting." 1

Sam had left the Academy under a cloud. He said this was because he insisted on being taught Latin and Greek classics in the original. The implication that this was beyond the depth of the Academy's faculty is not supported by the minutes of the Board of Trustees, of which James and Robert Houston were members. These mention "the Latin and Greek languages" as a part of "the course of academical study," and give the names of the students passing examinations in the same. Sam Houston's name is not on the list.

Sam obtained quarters for his school, and gave out the tuition rate as eight dollars for the term. This was a stiffer price by two dollars than any other teacher had charged for a primary or "English" school. The Academy charged only fifteen dollars a year. Sam stipulated that one-third of the eight dollars should be paid in cash, one-third in corn at thirty-three and one-third cents a bushel and one-third in calico "of variegated colors," from which the professor was to have his shirts made.

Although few pupils applied, Sam opened his classes after corn-planting in May of 1812. Except for the wheat harvest in July, there would be nothing to take the pupils from their studies until corn-gathering in November. After that school was impossible anyhow; it would be too cold to open the "windows" for light. The schoolhouse was in a clearing on John McCulloch's farm five miles east of Maryville. An oak tree had been spared to shade a spring of drinking water. 2 On one side and at one end of the room a log had been omitted from the walls. These apertures answered for windows. They were equipped with shutters which, in daytime, were opened downward on the inside, forming shelves that served as desks.

PANTALOONS AND WAISTCOATS 27

Sam's school caught the air of success. The split log benches were filled, and applicants were turned away. Years afterward, while swapping yarns on a steamboat crossing Galveston Bay, an old army comrade reminded General Houston that he had been the governor of one state, a United States senator from another, the commander-in-chief of an Army and the president of a Republic. Which office had afforded him the greatest pride?

"Well, Burke," replied Sam Houston, "when a young man in Tennessee I kept a country school, being then about eighteen years of age, and a tall, strapping fellow. At noon after the luncheon, which I and my pupils ate together out of our baskets, I would go into the woods and cut me a 'sour wood' stick, trim it carefully in circular spirals and thrust one half of it into the fire, which would turn it blue, leaving the other half white. With this emblem of ornament and authority ir my hand, dressed in a hunting-shirt of flowered calico, a long queue down my back, and the sense of authority over my pupils, I experienced a higher feeling of dignity and self-satisfaction than from any office or honor which I have since held." 3

When corn-gathering and cold weather put an end to Sam Houston's school, the professor's debts were paid and he returned to Maryville with money in his pocket.

3

It had been an eventful six months. At sundown on the twelfth day of June, 1812, little Billy Phillips, an old racehorse jockey from Nashville, swung into his saddle in front of the War Department in Washington and was off "like Greased Lightenin' . . . his horse's tail and his own long hair streaming in the wind." The President's courier reached Knoxville to find that Governor Blount had gone to Nashville. But Maryville got the news. The West had its war.

Billy clattered into Nashville at seven in the evening of June twenty-first and placed a copy of the war message in the

hands of the Governor. In nine days to the hour, he had ridden eight hundred and sixty miles over primitive roads and a chain of mountains. Tennessee had convulsions. The Governor summoned volunteers. "Those having no rifles of their own . . . will be furnished by the State to the extent of the supply on hand. . . . Each volunteer, including Company officers, is entitled to a powder horn full of the best Eagle powder, one dozen new sharp flints and lead enough to mould 100 bullets that fit his rifle. . . . It is desired to avoid the use of smooth-bore muskets as much as possible. They ... do not carry straight. They may be good enough for Regular soldiers but not the Citizen Volunteers of Tennessee. Uniform clothing being desirable . . . the Major General advises . . . dark-blue or nut-brown homespun. . . . Buckskin hunting shirts and leggins also may be worn. . . . Men who have them may, upon parade, wear white pantaloons and waistcoats."

The force was raised in two "divisions"—those of West and of East Tennessee. The West Tennesseeans, under Major General Jackson, formed the corps d'elite. They rushed to meet the foe at Natchez, but not until the commanding general had written a proclamation. "There is not one individual among the Volunteers who would not prefer perishing on the field of battle . . . than to return . . . covered with shame, ignominy and disgrace! Perish our friends—perish our wives—perish our children . . . nay, perish . . . every earthly consideration! But let the honor and the fame of the Volunteer Soldier be untarnished."

Captain Cusack's Mounted Gunmen flew the colors and were mobilized with the eastern division, but no such prospects of glory awaited these defenders.

Sam Houston had taken in all this from his classroom. No dark-blue or nut-brown homespun regalia for him; no flask of Eagle powder. Sam continued to work off his debts. It was just as well. There was glory that winter for none of the Tennessee troops. At Natchez no foe turned up.

PANTALOONS AND WAISTCOATS 29

In the fall Sam returned to Porter Academy as a student, but Sam never had much luck at the Academy. This time it was mathematics. He said he found geometry so "uninspiring" that he could not bring himself to solve the first problem in the book. Dr. Isaac Anderson, the new head teacher, does not mention geometry, but says Sam Houston was the most provoking student he ever had. "I often determined to lick him, but he would come up with such a pretty dish of excuses I could not do it." 4

Tennessee war news continued unencouraging. But Sam had his fill of school. Besides, his money had run out. On the twenty-fourth of March, 1813, he and a small boy named Willoughby Williams stood on a corner in Maryville watching a recruiting demonstration. Sam had watched many such, but this was a Regular Army party—smooth-bore muskets, possibly, but white pantaloons and waistcoats for every man. The drums were rolled, the colors paraded and the sergeant made a talk. When he finished Sam Houston stepped up and took a silver dollar from the drumhead. That was the token of entry into the military service.

As the recruit had barely passed his twentieth birthday, his mother's consent was necessary for his enlistment. She gave it and, at the same time, slipped on Sam's finger a plain gold ring—a talisman for the young soldier about to face the world. On the inside of the ring was engraved a single word epitomizing the creed that Elizabeth Houston said must for ever shine in the conduct of her son.

Before he left home Sam received from his mother another gift, and a most practical one considering the state of the western depots of the Army. "My son, take this musket and never disgrace it: for remember, I had rather all my sons should fill one honorable grave than that one of them should turn his back to save his life. Go, and remember, too, that while the door of my cabin is open to brave men, it is eternally shut against cowards." 5

This quotation was set down by her son in later years. It

is possible that Elizabeth Houston said it that way; possible also that Sam may have touched up her remarks with a few ennobling phrases of his own. But when one considers the temper of the motto in the ring—and Sam Houston had that ring on when he died—the feeling grows that the words were his mother's.

There was the usual feeling between the Regular and the volunteer troops, and before he joined his regiment Sam heard from the home-folk on this subject. With the galling inactivity of the East Tennessee militia and the bootless Natchez expedition in mind, Sam retorted that Blount County should "hear of me" before the war was over.

He marched off to the encampment of the 7th Infantry at Knoxville. In thirty days he was drill sergeant. In four months he was commissioned an ensign and transferred to the 39th Infantry. After a year of careful preparation, the 39th Regiment took the field. Not, however, to fight the British. At the last moment it was diverted against a strong tribe of Creek Indians who had gone over to the English. But the Cherokees whose hospitality Houston had enjoyed for three years were loyal. A band of their warriors—John and James Rogers among them—went ahead as scouts when the 39th Infantry marched into the wilderness of the Creek country.

The Creeks owned much of the land that is now Alabama. It had been guaranteed to them by a treaty which the whites had violated. This state of affairs was turned to the advantage of the British by Tecumseh, probably the most gifted of North American Indians, and a brigadier-general in the British Army. Tecumseh went south and stirred up a clan of the Creeks. The crimson war club, or Red Stick, was hung in the squares of their encampments, the British supplied arms and the braves rose under the half-breed, Bill Weathersford. Settlers fled to stockades. In August of 1813 Weathersford

PANTALOONS AND WAISTCOATS 31

fell upon one of these and scalped four hundred of the occupants.

With twenty-five hundred Tennessee militia, Andrew Jackson went after Weathersford. He won the first two battles. The next two were draws because a good part of Jackson's army ran away. Weathersford remained in the field with a thousand Red Sticks. Jackson was in camp at Fort Strother with a rabble of mutinous militiamen. Five thousand more militia had been ordered out, but what pleased Jackson most was the unexpected news that the 39th Regular Infantry was on the way to join him. "I am truly happy," he wrote in a confidential letter. "The Regulars will give strength to my arm and quell mutiny."

Ensign Sam Houston was leading a platoon when the 39th Infantry, three hundred and sixty strong, marched into Fort Strother on February 6, 1814. The Regulars' presence restored the fortunes of the campaign. Their first job dealt with mutiny, and gave Ensign Houston his first close view of the man whose star he was to follow so long and so far.

The morning had dawned cold and rainy and Private John Woods, having been on guard all night, obtained permission to leave his post and get something to eat. John was a quicktempered boy of seventeen who had been in the militia a month. He was in his tent eating when the officer of the day came by, and ordered the occupants to remove the scraps of their meal from the ground. Woods refused and couched his refusal in quite unmilitary terms. The officer ordered him arrested. Woods primed his gun and threatened to use it on the first man to touch him. Jackson heard the commotion.

"Which is the rascal? Shoot him!" he shouted, rushing from his tent.

Woods submitted to arrest and was confined in irons in the camp of the Regulars, but no one took the incident seriously. At worst it would mean drumming another man out of camp. Insubordination had been no novelty with the Tennessee militia.

John Woods was tried for mutiny and sentenced to be shot. For two nights Jackson paced his tent without closing his eyes. Then he mounted his horse and rode out of earshot of musketry. The army was formed in hollow square. A scared backwoods Tennesssee boy faced a squad of Regulars with their smooth-bore rifles of .70 caliber primed and cocked. An officer dropped his sword, and the professional soldiers did their duty.

The effect on the army was described, by one who was there, as "salutary ."

Forty hours later the army was on the march. Weathers-ford was waiting. He had put the finishing touches to his entrenchment at To-ho-pe-ka, or the Horseshoe, a bend in the Tallapoosa River, fifty-five miles south of Fort Strother. It took Jackson ten days to beat through the wilderness that far. He arrived on March 26, 1814, with two thousand men.

The Horseshoe enclosed one hundred acres, furrowed by gullies and covered with small timber and brush. Weathers-ford had improved this natural situation with a log breastworks across the neck of the peninsula. At the end of the peninsula, he had tied a fleet of canoes to insure his retreat should the breastworks be overrun.

Jackson surrounded the peninsula. Cherokee scouts swam the river and carried off Weathersford's canoes. A thousand men were drawn up on the land side to storm the breastworks. Interpreters were sent to tell the Creeks to send their non-combatants across the river. At ten o'clock on the morning of March twenty-seventh, Jackson's two little cannon began to whang away at the breastworks at eighty yards. The round shot sank harmlessly in the spongy green logs, and Creek sharpshooters picked off the artillerymen at the guns.

The infantry attack was delayed until the Indian women and children were conveyed to places of safety. This was

PANTALOONS AND WAISTCOATS 33

completed at twelve-thirty o'clock. The Red Sticks signaled that they were ready. Jackson was ready. The drums beat the long roll, and the infantry charged.

The Regulars reached the ramparts first. Major Lemuel P. Montgomery scaled them and toppled back dead, but his name survives in the capital city of Alabama. Ensign Sam Houston was the next man on the works. Waving his sword he leaped down among the Red Sticks on the other side. The platoon scrambled after its leader. The first men over found him, covered with blood, beating off a ring of Indians with his sword.

The ramparts were taken. Ensign Houston tried to pull out an arrow that was sticking in his thigh, but it would not come. He asked a lieutenant who was fighting near by to remove it. The officer gave a pull, but the arrow was a barbed one and held fast. The lieutenant said to go to a surgeon. Infuriated by pain, Houston brandished his sword and commanded the lieutenant to pull with all his strength. The officer braced himself and yanked the arrow out, but made such a gash that Houston limped away to find the surgeons. They plugged up the wound, and Houston was lying on the ground to steady himself when Jackson rode by. He inquired about Houston's injury and ordered him not to return to the battle. Houston later said he might have obeyed if he had not recalled his boast that Maryville should hear of him before he got back.

6

When their fortification was overrun, the Creeks split into bands and retreated into undergrowth which made ideal Indian fighting ground. Twenty small battles raged at once, each a confusion of arrows, balls, spears, tomahawks and knives. The Red Sticks fought with the impersonal courage that is a part of the Indian culture. If the battle had started off badly, no matter. The Great Spirit was testing the faith of his children. He would intervene and give them victory.

The medicine-men had said so. The signal would be a cloud in the heavens.

So Weathersf ord's men fought on—beneath a cloudless sky that spanned the bloody hundred acres. "Not a warrior," Sam Houston related, "offered to surrender, even while the sword was at his breast." Band after band was surrounded and slain to a man. Medicine-men moved among those who held out, impassively scanning the heavens.

In the middle of the afternoon Jackson suspended hostilities and sent an interpreter to say that all who surrendered should be spared. During this lull in the action a small cloud appeared. The medicine-men redoubled their incantations and the warriors renewed the fight with fanatic fury. The result, said Houston, was "slaughter." The signal in the heavens brought a quiet spring shower, but no deliverance to the brave. By evening resistance was at an end, except for a band entrenched in a covered redoubt at the bottom of a ravine. Jackson offered them life if they would give up, but they declined it. The General called for volunteers to storm the stronghold. For a moment no officer stepped out. Then Ensign Houston, calling to his men to follow, advanced down the ravine.

When the men hesitated the wounded Ensign seized a musket from one of them and ordered a charge. The only chance of success was to rush the port-holes which bristled with arrows and rifle barrels. Houston plunged on, and when five yards from the redoubt stopped and leveled his piece. He received a volley from the port-holes. One ball shattered his right arm. Another smashed his right shoulder. His musket fell to the ground and his command took cover. The rash boy officer tried to rally his men; they failed him, and alone he climbed back up the ravine under fire and collapsed when he reached the top.

Jackson reduced the redoubt by setting fire to it with flaming arrows. The Creek insurrection was over, and the British were without military representation in the South.

CHAPTER IV

Me. Calhoun Rebukes

They carried Ensign Houston to the clearing where the surgeons were busy by the light of a semicircular brush fire. A canteen of whisky was thrust in his hands, and the wounded boy was told to take a pull. A pair of muscular orderlies took hold of him, and the doctors went to work. They redressed the lacerated thigh and splinted the broken arm. They tried to fish the ball from the smashed shoulder, but gave up the job; it did not seem that the Ensign could live until morning anyhow. He had bled too much.

Sam was laid on the wet ground for the night. It occurred to him that he had done enough for the home-folk to hear of it. He tried to recall just what he had done, but things grew dimmer and calmer and he went to sleep.

In the morning Sam, too weak to walk, was lifted on to a litter made of saplings and started on a journey through the wilderness to Fort Williams sixty miles away. How he survived the trip, Houston himself said he never knew. The other wounded officers were taken to Fort Jackson and well cared for, but through an oversight, or because his condition would not admit of removal, Sam was left at Fort Williams under the care of two sympathetic militia officers of no medical experience. They finally sent him to a crude field hospital maintained by the volunteer troops of East Tennessee.

When the East Tennesseeans started home to be demobilized, they carried the abandoned Ensign on a horse litter.

He was delirious part of the time, his food was of the coarsest description, and he lacked the simplest medicines. In May of 1814, nearly two months after the battle, he reached his mother's home. Mrs. Houston recognized her son only by the "wonted expression" in his eyes.

At the house on the hillside Sam began to mend and presently traveled to Knoxville to see a doctor. The journey exhausted him completely. The doctor, a Scotchman, said that since Sam could live only a few days, it would be needless to run up a bill. Houston installed himself in lodgings, and two weeks later revisited the doctor, who then took the case. After a couple of months, the convalescent was able to set out on horseback for Washington, thinking to benefit by the change of scene. Besides, he had never been to Washington.

The British started for Washington about the same time and got there first. Houston saw only the ashes of the Capitol and of the President's house. Beholding "the ruins that heroic people had worked" Sam said his "blood boiled" and caused him "the keenest pangs" to think that he "should be disabled lit such a moment." His wounds began troubling him again, so he posted over the Blue Ridge to rest at the homes of his relations in the Valley of Virginia.

Early in 1815 Sam rejoined his regiment in Tennessee, there receiving the glorious news of the battle w of New Orleans. "People here are much gratified at the restoration of peace," he wrote to his cousin, Robert McEwen. "The officers of the army," however, "would as soon the war continued." But Sam was "willing to sacrifice my wish to the welfare of the Republic." The sacrifice might be a real one. Sam was afraid peace should leave him without an occupation. If so, he would go to Knoxville "for it will be proper for me to pursue some course for a livelihood which will not be laborious as my wounds are not near well, and I suppose it will be impracticable for a disbanded officer to marry for the[yj will be regarded as cloathes out of fashion . . . but I will not

despond before I am disappointed and I suppose that will be some time for I will not court any of the Dear Girles before I make a fortune and if I come no better speed than I have done heretofore it will take some time." 1

The young veteran's misgivings concerning peace proved baseless. The 39th Regiment was discontinued in post-war reduction of the Army, but Ensign Houston was promoted to second lieutenant and transferred to the 1st Infantry, garrisoned at New Orleans. At Nashville he equipped himself for active duty.

A promenade in the public square brought the new lieutenant to the notice of two elegantly attired young ladies. They were the Misses Kent, top-notch quality from Virginia, but Sam had not been introduced. Nevertheless, he touched his shako.

"Who was that handsome officer ?" whispered one of the girls.

Sam turned and saluted the sisters with an elaborate bow.

"Lieutenant Houston, United States Army, ladies, at your service," he said, and strolled on. 2

Sam was delighted with the prospects of the New Orleans assignment. With two youthful companions he bought a skiff and embarked by way of the "three rivers," as the saying was—the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi. The first two thousand miles of the circuitous journey proved devoid of adventure, however, and Sam spent most of his time reading some books he had brought along, including Shakespeare, Akenside's poems, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, The Vicar of Wakefield and a Bible that his mother had given him. Rounding the point of a bluff above Natchez, the young travelers saw what looked like a great raft afire in the middle of the river. It was a steamboat, the first the adventurers ever had seen. They sold their skiff and took passage to New Orleans on the steamboat.

New Orleans came up to expectations. Saturday parade in the Place d'Armes was followed by a promenade of the fashionable along the willow bordered walks beyond the dismantled ramparts. At the Hotel du Tremoulet in the Rue St. Pierre, the Bourbonists held forth in high feather, while two threadbare generals of Napoleon sipped their four-o'clock coffee and cognac at the Cafe des Refugies, and plotted with the retired pirate, Dominique You, to bring the Emperor thither from the Rock. In the cool of the evening, Spaniards strummed guitars among the palms of the Place Congo. Nights were gallant and gay: the twice-weekly masked ball at the French theater in the Rue St. Philippe . . . the quadroon ball which began at midnight a square away . . . a peal of laughter from a shuttered house . . . the silvery cathedral bells. The old Creole town was not the place to ignore a big good-looking boy with a locker full of white pantaloons.

This was too pleasant to last. The Army doctors looked at Sam's To-ho-pe-ka shoulder, and said that the ball in there would have to come out. It was removed, but Sam nearly died as a result of the operation, which lamed him for life. The shoulder never healed.

During a winter of suffering in the damp French-built barracks by the river, the invalid got a taste of the dismal bickerings that seem inseparable from peace-time Army life. Lieutenant Houston wrote to the Secretary of War in February of 1816:

"Mr. Crawford, Sir, I address you in consequence of an error in my last promotion, which was to a 2d Lieut in the 39th Regt of Infy. My promotion is dated the 20th of May 1814 and the vacancy which I filled occur'd on the 27th of March 1814, [when] the deaths of Lieuts Somerville and Moulton gave me promotion and I hope you will not conceive me intruding when I am contending for the rank which I am entitled to. . . . For a proper knowledge of my conduct ... I refer you to Major Genl Jackson under whose eye I was

amongst the first to charge over the enemies Breastwork. . . . My reasons for not referring you to my former Col Williams are He has ever been inimical to me, since I have joined this Regiment he has written letters to officers calculated to prejudice them against me. . . . Your Hble Servt

"Sam Houston, "Lt 1st Regt Infantry." 8

The interest that Jackson had taken in the wounded Ensign appears to have been the cause of Colonel Williams's aversion. Sam was disgusted and thought of leaving the Army as soon as his wounds were well. But his health showed no improvement, and in the spring he was sent by sea to New York for further treatment. After several weeks there, he began to feel better and went to East Tennessee on furlough to visit his family. He was not home long, but there was time enough to fall in love before orders came to report at Nashville for duty at the headquarters of the Southern Division of the Army.

Jackson commanded the Southern Division. He had been a major-general in the Regular establishment since To-ho-pe-ka. This made a difference in Army life for Lieutenant Houston. The East Tennessee love-affair also made a difference. But surveying matters from the perspective of Nashville, Sam seems to have regained his grip on his earlier resolution concerning matrimony. True, he was in rather deeply—so deeply that he felt the need of help in extricating himself. He asked a boyhood friend in Knoxville to call on the young lady and see what could be done. This ambassador mismanaged his mission:

"Sam, perhaps I ventured too far after hearing from you . . . respecting the affair between yourself and M . . . . Things stand in a remarkably unpleasant situation with respect to you & the queen of 'gildhalP Her friends perhaps have led her into error and one too for which

she will not soon pardon herself but she has thrown W M

sky high and is ready any moment to join her fate to

Sam's. . . . Why should you not realize the golden days that await an union with the Princess of E. T.? When you cease to love her your heart will become vitrified & a marriage with any other person will be for convenience and not for happiness. . . . Here she is . . . ready to leave mother home friends and every thing dear to her, and forsake them all, and go with you to earth's remotest bounds. ... I know & you know that J. Beene is your friend & if I were to advise you it would be to speedily marry M by moonshine or any other way the most handy. . . . Weigh well the verdict you are about to pronounce. . . .

"Yours Sentimentally,

"Jesse Beene." 4

How the Lieutenant wiggled out of the dilemma does not appear, but the files of the War Department indicate a mood for special duty. Houston solicited a transfer, which Jackson endorsed, and the Lieutenant took off his uniform and unobstrusively left Nashville.

3

/n beaded buckskins, Co-lon-neh crossed the boundary into the Indian country and took the trail toward the island home of Oo-loo-te-ka: The Raven had returned to his brothers. The Indians received him without suspicion, which, in view of the strained relations existing between the United States and the Cherokee Nation, was more than they would have done for almost any one else bearing the credentials of a subagent of the Indian Bureau.

The trouble arose from the treaty of 1816, signed the year before. By this instrument a group of Cherokee chiefs had ceded to the United States one million three hundred thousand acres of the Cherokee Nation in eastern Tennesse in exchange for territory west of the Mississippi for which the whites had no use. The individual tribesmen, and many of the chiefs, not having been consulted, sought to repudiate the action of the signers. The Tennessee mountains were the only home they

MR. CALHOUN REBUKES "41

had ever known. Their cornfields were there; their gods dwelt in those skies. This land had been guaranteed to them "for ever" by the United States Government. They declined to move. The treaty-making chiefs could do nothing about it.

In the eyes of the United States this was impertinence. "Unprincipled" was what Governor McMinn, of Tennessee, called these Indians, repudiating the pledged word of their own leaders—whom the United States had so carefully bribed. They were "a Set of the most Finished Tyrants that ever lived in a land of liberty." 5

The frontier took alarm and demanded "firm" measures. But this fell out at an awkward time for the military. The Commanding General of the Southern Division was occupied with plans for another Indian war. The disrespectful attitude of the Georgia Seminoles afforded a pretext for seizing Florida, and so Jackson wanted no distractions at home. The olive branch and not the sword must be carried among the Cherokees. When Lieutenant Houston applied for an Indian assignment, Jackson wrote a strong endorsement to the application. Houston "has my entire confidence," the Secretary of War was informed.

The new Indian agent began his labors well. He appeared among the nettled tribesmen, speaking their language and living their life. His first acts were to make good some of the government's defaulted promises. It was winter, and Houston requisitioned blankets and distributed them. He got kettles for the women, traps for the hunters and, as proof of his confidence in the honor of his Indian brothers, rifles for the braves. Then it was time to sit by a council fire and speak of the unfortunate treaty of 1816.

Sam Houston approached the whole situation from his knowledge of the Indian's character and of the pattern of his mind. The first consideration concerned the sacredness of treaties. A "paper talk" had been made. Rightly or wrongly certain chiefs had signed it. Houston was on strong ground there. Contrary to centuries of propaganda that has crys-

tallized into a fixed idea, Indians were usually more faithful to their word than the frontiersmen with whom they came in contact.

Yet, a difficulty confronted the negotiator of which the white officials probably knew nothing. Irrespective of the treaty, a grave consideration interposed against the emigration. The Cherokees were to go West, and West in the Cherokee religion had a sinister connotation. The West was the Darkening Land, abode of the Black Man, the god of evil, and his myriad of ill-intentioned black godlings. The Cherokees had no wish to turn their backs on the East, the Sun Land, residence of the Red Man and his good under-gods. In all the legends the Cherokee people knew, the West symbolized darkness, death and defeat.

Nevertheless, Lieutenant Houston convinced the Cherokees that they would be better off beyond the Father of Waters where the white man should never intrude. Oo-loo-te-ka and his band were the first to depart. The government generously equipped them for the journey. A party of three hundred and forty-one, including one hundred and nine warriors "each armed with a good new rifle," embarked on well-provisioned flatboats. This "dazzling" display was paraded before the Indians who still hesitated. The moral effect was tremendous.

Oo-loo-te-ka's name was also signed to a propaganda letter enumerating the benefits the Indians should derive from emigration to this Eden on the Arkansas. "You must not think by removing we shall return to the savage life. You have taught us to be Herdsmen and cultivators. . . . Our women will raise the cotton and the Indigo and spin and weave cloth to cloath our children. Numbers of our young people can read and write, they can read what we call the Preachers Book. . . . By intermarriages with our white brethren we are gradually becoming one people." 8

Since Oo-loo-te-ka could not write and was opposed to Christianity and cross-marriages, the origin of this document is obscure, but Sam Houston may have inspired it. In any

event, the Cherokees were off, the border rested easier and Sam returned to Nashville to receive the thanks of Governor McMinn, and promotion to first lieutenant.

Then something happened that threatened to upset everything. Ten years before, there had been a voluntary westward emigration of Cherokees under Tah-lhon-tusky, an older brother of Oo-loo-te-ka, and one of the great Cherokee leaders of the period. The vanguard of the new exodus was scarcely on its way when Tah-lhon-tusky appeared in Knox-ville. His look was troubled.

The West, indeed, was the Darkening Land. There were the Osages to fight; but Tah-lhon-tusky said he could handle the Osages, if the government would attend to some other things. His western Cherokees had not received their share of the annuities the government paid into the treasury of the Cherokee Nation, as indemnity for ceded lands. Tah-lhon-tusky wished to secede from the central government of the Nation, located in Georgia, and wished the United States to recognize his independence. With a number of warriors and statesmen, he was on his way to lay the case before President Monroe.

Governor McMinn detained Tah-lhon-tusky with fair assurances, and sent letters to forewarn Washington of the impending complication. The venerable Indian made a deep impression on the Governor who endeavored to pass on to Secretary of War Calhoun some idea of Tah-lhon-tusky and his colleagues. "I hazard nothing that he is considered in the light of a king among his people." Next in rank of the delegation was Too-chee-la, a chieftain second in influence only to the great leader. There was also The Glass, "more celebrated for his upright deportment than ... for his valor in war," but the military was represented by Captain Speers and Captain Lamore, who had fought with Jackson in 1812. The

interpreter was James Rogers, nephew of Tah-lhon-tusky and a boyhood friend of Sam Houston. This selection seems to have been a happy one. James's father was now secretly in the pay of the United States. And Governor McMinn had provided still another safeguard. "Lieutenant Houston . . . by whose vigilance and address they will be most profited" would accompany these important travelers to the seat of the Great White Father. 7

5

Lieutenant Houston had returned from his earlier mission to the Indian country in great distress from an inflammation of his shoulder wound. Nevertheless, he resumed his breech clout and blanket and, as The Raven, presented himself to his foster-uncle, the eminent Tah-lhon-tusky. The prestige that family ties have among Indians placed Sam Houston in a position of tactical importance to his government.

The delegation set out from Knoxville making a fine show— "the equal," wrote so watchful a critic as Governor McMinn, "in point of respectability of Character, of appearance and Dress to any other I have ever seen from any of the Indian Tribes." They traveled slowly. Tah-lhon-tusky was old, he had been little in the white man's country, and there was much to see. On the fifth day of February, 1818, the party arrived in Washington and was received by the Secretary of War. Mr. Calhoun had been coached in advance. He welcomed the visitors with the flawless Carolina courtesy that was to carry this statesman near, quite near, to the goal of his ultimate ambitions. After an exchange of amenities, the Secretary said that President Monroe was waiting to greet the delegation.

Tah-lhon-tusky and his people rose to depart. As they filed out the Secretary signed for Lieutenant Houston to remain. When the two were alone the mask of official politeness fell, and Mr. Calhoun abruptly demanded what an officer of the Army meant by appearing before the Secretary of War dressed as a savage.

Houston was somewhat stunned. The diplomatic advantage of having an agent who could pass as Tah-lhon-tusky's kinsman, was evidently less important to Mr. Calhoun than the punctilio of military etiquette.

With the reprimand still galling his pride, Houston some days later received a second summons to the Secretary's office. Mr. Calhoun gravely informed the Lieutenant that he had been accused of complicity with slave smugglers. Houston told his side of the story. During his recent presence among the Cherokees in Tennessee, he had come across a band of slave smugglers carrying negroes from Florida and broken up its activities without asking for instructions.

Houston's story was so straightforward that the Secretary promised an investigation. Houston vigorously assisted this inquiry. He carried his case in person to President Monroe. It was disclosed that Houston had told the truth, and that the accusation had originated with members of Congress who were, to say the least, on friendly terms with the smugglers.

Houston cleared himself,—merely that. There was no move to prosecute those whose guilt he had made plain; no move to investigate the crooked politicians who had undertaken to ruin an obscure Army officer; no expression of thanks to Houston; no regret for the false accusation. Sam Houston went to his lodgings and wrote in a hand too hurried for punctuation:

"Washington City "March 1st 1818 "Sir

"You will please accept this as my resignation to take effect from this date. I have the honor

to be "Your Most Obt Servt "Sam Houston "1st Lieut 1st Infy "Genl D. Parker "A & Ins Genl. "W. City." 8

With a certain impassioned dignity, the profession of arms was renounced by a young man of twenty-five, who had intended to follow that calling through life. Sam Houston had grown to like the Army. He was ill from wounds. Five years of somewhat distinguished, and certainly disinterested service, had been shabbily rewarded. Yet the regret with which he took his leave appears in the request for a memento, appended as a postscript to his resignation.

"I will thank you to give me my commission, which I am entitled to by my last promotion. Yours &c

"S. Houston"

Tah-lhon-tusky and his followers had been in Washington all this time. They were showered with attention and sent away with promises, personal gifts and a consignment of seed corn for the tribe—apparently as pleased as if they had obtained all that they had come for. Governor McMinn hastened to congratulate the Secretary of War. "I am truly pleased to learn that the usual plan has been taken with the Chiefs . . . corrupt as it may appear," namely that of "purchasing their friendship." 9

The ex-Lieutenant journeyed westward with Tah-lhon-tusky as far as the Hiwassee River in Tennessee. He wound up the affairs of his subagency and resigned that office also. Saying good-by to the last of his Cherokee friends who were leaving for the Arkansas, he turned his horse toward the distant metropolis of Nashville.

CHAPTER V The Steps of the Temple

When Lieutenant Houston left the Army he was fashionably in debt, and to liquidate his obligations sold "everything" he could spare, "including some land." This seems to have been the end of his eighth interest in the Baker's Creek farm, which already had afforded an example of worldly possessions failing to comfort the possessor. The property was taken over by Brother James. 1 The consideration does not appear to have been much, although the land was valuable by now. At any rate, the sale of all his effects failed to bring Sam out of debt. Sam was no great business man, but he usually got what he wanted. If he tossed his patrimony to a hard-fisted brother for a pittance it was probably because the gesture was worth more to him than the money.

In Nashville he began to read law in the office of James Trimble. Judge Trimble had known Sam's people in Virginia. He outlined an eighteen-month course of reading. Sam sat down in the chair that Lemuel Montgomery had occupied, and opened the same books that that eager young man had put down in 1812 to go to war.

In six months the student astonished his preceptor by passing an examination for admission to the bar. He went to Lebanon, thirty miles east of Nashville, to practise. There he was befriended by Isaac Galladay, whose benevolences Houston never forgot. For a dollar a month Mr. Galladay provided the young lawyer with an office. As postmaster, Mr.

Galladay extended credit for postage—quite an item since it cost twenty-five cents to send a letter. As merchant, he furnished his young friend with a wardrobe, and in this detail Sam did not stint the generosity of his benefactor. He dressed fit to kill: bell-crowned beaver, plum colored coat, tight breeches and waistcoats that were studies.

The well-attired stranger was instantly popular. He was easy to remember—a perfectly proportioned, military figure considerably more than six feet tall, with a pleasant way, a pleasant word and a rich warm voice. Maidens were interested when he bowed over their hands, and the young ladies' mothers no less charmed by his careful courtesy. Men repeated his anecdotes and listened to his views on politics.

The barrister rode to Nashville often. Lebanon knew little of these journeys, except that they had an air of importance— which was enough. On the way Houston usually stopped off at the Hermitage. Governor McMinn also was a regular caller at General Jackson's residence. After one of his visits, the Executive drove back to Murfreesboro and announced the appointment of Sam Houston as adjutant-general of the state militia.

This made him Colonel Houston, and Sam was not the man to scorn a military title so essential to good standing. There were journeys to Murfreesboro, the state capital, to sweat over muddled records. It was tedious business, and so one day when John Rogers was announced, the Colonel cheerfully pitched aside his ink-spattered muster rolls to talk of old times.

The two friends had much to say. Times had changed since the days on Oo-loo-te-ka's island, where Sam had discovered love and John had discovered English from Sam's recitations of the Iliad. John's father was still headman of the tribe, and young John himself was coming on—Captain Rogers, he now subscribed himself, showing the effect of proximity to a superior culture.

John related the story of the Cherokees' odyssey. They had fulfilled their part of the treaty, but the government had

not fulfilled its part. The generous gesture that had lured the Indians away peaceably was terminated when the government had the Indians where it wanted them. The lands on the Arkansas had been flagrantly misrepresented. The neighboring tribes were hostile. There Cherokees were harassed, hungry and homesick. The agent, Reuben Lewis, rather increased their hardships than otherwise. The West was the Darkening Land.

Oo-loo-te-ka was trying to make the best of his bargain. He had prevailed upon the agent to resign, 2 a statement which Sam must have thought incredible until John exhibited a copy of the resignation. This was all very well, but Oo-loo-te-ka had another idea in mind when he persuaded the agent to withdraw. He besought The Raven to return to his "father" and accept the vacancy.

Sam Houston was profoundly touched. He sensed an obligation unfulfilled. Already Sam had seen enough of another life to appreciate the wilderness and his early taste of its sweets. He wavered from the resolution that had fortified him against the loss of an Army career, and bidding John an affectionate good-by, wrote impulsively to Jackson. "Now, General, be candid. ... I have some liking for such a situation! I don't know what is best, but permit me to ask you." 3

Jackson did not lose a day in sending a three-page letter to Mr. Calhoun. "I . . . enclose you a letter from Col. Samuel Houston . . . formerly of the 39th and last of the first Regiment of U. States Infantry. I have recommended him to accept the appointment of Agent. I have done this more with a view to the interest of the LT. States than his own. ... In the capacity of agent he can draw to the Arkansas in a few years the whole strength of the Cherokee Nation now in the East of the Mississippi River." 4 In the light of contemporary Indian policy, better reasons for the appointment could not have been urged.

Mr. Calhoun made the appointment—but Houston's mood

had passed. He declined the post. A little later another opening was presented that was more in accord with his previous aims. With Jackson's endorsement, Sam Houston captured a nomination for prosecuting attorney, or attorney-general as they called it, of the Nashville district and was elected.

In Lebanon there was a great ceremony of leave-taking. The public square was filled. Houston stood on the steps of the little court-house and made a speech. Descending, he moved through the throng of well-wishers, shaking hands and bowing himself from Lebanon's small world which had known the man it honored in such warm fashion for less than a year.

2

General Jackson's presentable young friend proved so successful as a public prosecutor that he resigned in a year to reap the larger rewards of a private practise. He made a local reputation as a trial lawyer. His fellow officers in the state militia elected him their major-general. The ground of Tennessee was rising under Houston's feet, but this was of no avail in a matter that had been hanging fire in the War Department since the Major-General was a first lieutenant of Regulars. After resigning from the Army and from the Indian service, the final audit of his accounts showed a balance due from the government of one hundred and seventy dollars and nine cents. In his starving student days and later, Houston had vainly tried to collect this money, but could never surmount the complications which he attributed to the personal vindictiveness of the Secretary of War.

In 1822, when Houston's law practise was yielding a good income, the debt was paid by a draft on a Nashville bank. The bank offered to honor the draft at a discount of twenty-seven per cent., and Houston returned it to Mr. Calhoun. "I can see no reason for the conduct pursued by you . . . unless it is that I am the same man against whom you conceived so strong a prejudice in 1818. . . . Sir I

THE STEPS OF THE TEMPLE 51

could have forgotten the unprovoked injuries inflicted upon me if you were not disposed to continue them. But your reiteration shall not be unregarded. . . . Your personal bad treatment, your official injustice . . . was to oblige a Senator—secure his interest and crush a sub agent. . . . All this will I remember as a man." 5 Fair warning, Mr. Calhoun. But where one man in Washington seemed to go out of his way to court the ill-will of Sam Houston a thousand in Tennessee were anxious to be his friends. The young lawyer was well up in the Jackson political hierarchy in the state, and much in the company of the new Governor, William Carroll. Billy Carroll was Jackson's right-hand man in Tennessee. Just now he was experimenting with the political machine designed to help the General capture the presidency in 1824. Carroll's manipulations mark the dawn of modern politics, and various chores were delegated to Houston who did them well. In 1823 the new helper had qualified himself for promotion. A nod from Jackson and Sam was nominated for Congress. The election that followed was somewhat in the nature of a try-out for the Carroll machine. The performance was satisfactory. Having no opposition, Houston received every vote cast.

3

Five years after Sam Houston had left Washington a disillusioned ex-lieutenant without occupation or prospects, he returned a major-general, a congressman-elect and a protege of the most popular man in the country. He strolled along Pennsylvania Avenue rather pleased with himself except in one particular: he did not care for the hat he was wearing. But this upsetting circumstance did not endure for long. He ran across Edward George Washington Butler, an old Tennessee friend, who knew Washington. Where was the best place to buy a narrow-brimmed beaver?

The two visited shop after shop until Sam found the right hat. He put it on and asked his friend to walk to the Capitol.

They crossed the sheep meadow that surrounded the government house, and ascended the broad white steps. Sam made his way to the colonnaded hall of Representatives and roamed through the empty chamber. Finally he selected the seat he wanted for his own.

"Now, Butler," he remarked, "I am a member of Congress. I will show Mr. Calhoun that I have not forgotten his insult to a poor lieutenant." 6

The dome of the new Capitol under which Representative Houston confided this inkling of his aspirations was smaller than the one that is there now, but otherwise the plan of Washington was "colossal," as the visiting Duke of Saxe-Weimar expressed it, "and will hardly ever be executed. It could contain a population of one million, whilst it is said at present to have but 13,000." Public buildings were miles apart. When one had to walk through the mud from one to another, the metropolitan idea seemed like carrying optimism too far, and there was talk of moving the seat of government to Wheeling, Virginia.

But congressmen need not walk to the sociable tavern which advertised "a post coach and four horses . . . kept for the conveyance of Members to and from the Capitol ... by the public's obedient servant William O'Neale." A night's lodging at Major O'Neale's cost twenty-five cents, fire and candle extra. Meals were a dollar a day, bitters and brandy twelve and a half cents, toddy a quarter.

The elite of southern officialdom held forth at O'Neale's. Jackson stayed there, and for five winters it had been the home of John H. Eaton, Jackson lieutenant and the senior senator from Tennessee. The junior senator was Jackson himself. He had been elected on short notice. The distinction was unsought and unwelcome, but necessary to keep the seat from unfriendly hands.

Taking his place in Congress under the eye of the Master gave Sam Houston entree to the inner circle at O'Neale's where the great and the aspiring discussed matters in a close at-

mosphere of tobacco juice and Monongahela toddies. A young man could have found no better school of applied politics, although it did not leave Houston much time to use the personally selected seat on the floor of the House. In fact, trace of his presence in the House is practically limited to the yeas and nays. This voting record is a simple duplication of the views of the Master, including support of the proposal to place frying-pans on the free list—a concession in the Tariff Bill designed to captivate the frontier.

Socially the Congressman had a good time. He kept late hours and cruised in interesting company. One evening Representative Daniel Webster and Junius Brutus Booth took advantage of an afflorescent tavern fellowship to rally Sam on the style of his oratory. Mr. Webster professed chagrin that the Tennesseean should prefer the manner of Booth, while the tragedian affected disappointment because so promising a pupil had selected for his model the gentleman from Massachusetts. Both were unjust to their young friend. Sam did not make many speeches, and those he did make were quite succinct for an era when to be a great orator was to be a great man.

As a matter of course Sam made the acquaintance of Margaret O'Neale, the innkeeper's daughter. Peg was good-looking, and the camaraderie of the big tavern house did not diminish her charms. To be quite accurate, Peg was now Mrs. John Timberlake, but John Timberlake was not much in evidence, being a purser in the Navy who went on long voyages. The sailor's wife consoled herself with the society of her father's clientele. The name mentioned most frequently was that of Senator John Henry Eaton, of Tennessee. He was rich and a widower.

The winter passed agreeably enough for Representative Houston. "Jackson is gaining every day,'* he wrote in Feb-

ruary of 1824, "and will be the next president." 7 And so it seemed when the votes were counted that November. Jackson carried eleven states. John Quincy Adams carried seven states. Three went to Crawford of Georgia and three to the Speaker of the House, Mr. Clay. But there was no majority in the electoral college, and it devolved upon the House of Representatives to break the deadlock.

This would take place in February. Meantime, Washington seethed with electioneering. When all was said, it was Mr. Clay who would name the next president of the' United States. Sam Houston was in the midst of that boiling activity. He boldly bid for the support of Clay. "What a splendid administration it would make," he told the Speaker's friend, Sloane, of Ohio, "with Old Hickory as President and Mr. Clay as Secretary of State." 8

The trend of affairs was not encouraging to the Jackson forces. Their patron was of slight assistance, turning not a hand to win the favor of Mr. Clay. "The members 1 are as the tomb," wrote Houston as the weeks dragged on and the rumor grew that Clay would swing his strength to Adams. The Jackson people still had strong hopes, though, and in the last days of the canvass Houston was grimly "confident . . . that Jackson will succeed. . . . This you will at least suppose is my honest opinion as an expression of an opinion at this time can answer no purpose!" 9

But Jackson did not succeed. In a dramatic scene, which surprised seasoned politicians who expected a long battle, Adams won easily on the first ballot.

Old Hickory took it more calmly than many of his followers and paid the President-Elect a stiff courtesy call. And then Mr. Clay was made Secretary of State. This was too much. The virtuous Jacksonians recovered their tongues and cried, "Corrupt bargain!"

Meantime John C. Calhoun had slipped into the vice-presidency. All in all, the campaign of 1824 represented a reverse to a tall young man with a tall hat and similar ambitions.

But Sam still had an iron in the fire. On his way to Washington the autumn previous, he had thought of stopping off en route and resuming his journey with a bride. But "to have married on my way here would not have answered a good purpose. My errand here is to attend to . . . business . . . and not to 'spend honeymoons.' Everything in due season!" 10

Through the stresses of a winter that had seen the lapse of many loyalties, the ardent hope persevered in the breast of Sam Houston. On the eve of the fatal balloting in the House chamber, he wrote to a friend who stood in need of consolation. "I regret that you have been unsuccessful in love affairs. But you have taken the best course possible to be extricated, by taking a new chase! For my single self I do not know the sweets of Matrimony, but in March or Apl. Next I will; unless something takes place not to be expected or wished for." 11

The unexpected and unwished for somehow interposed. March and April came. Houston went home and was reelected to Congress, but he returned to Washington still a stranger to the sweets of matrimony.

There was work to do. Discreet preliminaries for the Jackson campaign of 1828 were under way. Sam Houston was a freer agent than heretofore, because Jackson was not at his side. The old leader had drawn a long breath and retired from the Senate to the agreeable shades of the Hermitage.

Jackson's going gave Houston a chance to develop as a legislator rather than a lobbyist. He began to show his head above the level of the Congressional pack. He had his miniature painted and went about in society. The new chase theory, possibly; at any rate, the miniature is said to have changed hands rather often. He crossed the river to call on Mary

Custis, the daughter of George Washington Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington and heiress to the mansion of Arlington. Representative Houston was the chairman of the Congressional Board of Visitors of the United States Military Academy. The annual inspections of this august body were a great event at the institution on the Highlands of the Hudson where a shy third-classman was writing letters to the same Mary Custis. The young lady was so indifferent to the claims of fame as to prefer this quiet youth who did not drink or smoke, and eventually to marry Second Lieutenant Robert E. Lee, Corps of Engineers.

Still, it was as one of Andrew Jackson's young men that Sam Houston owed his surest claim to contemporary notice. He was one of the trio that Jackson dubbed his "literary bureau," from the amount of writing they did to keep the General's candidacy before the country. The other two were Senator Eaton and Judge Jacob C. Isacks, of Winchester, Tennessee. They enjoyed themselves and contributed to a great many newspapers. Sometimes the same man, using different names, would carry on both sides of a controversy.

Sam Houston is believed also to have written "A Civil and Military History of Andrew Jackson, by an American Army Officer," which in 1825 took its place in the current flood of Jackson literature. It is better and briefer than "The Life of Andrew Jackson, by John Henry Eaton, Senator of the United States," which the author was now enlarging to include such details of the Florida campaign as he thought proper. The two authors were jealous of each other; Houston's rapid rise had irritated many older men. His work suited Jackson, though, and, in the second campaign, he was one of the responsible circle upon whom devolved the ticklish duty of curbing the Master's temper. Once Houston declined to deliver a letter that Jackson addressed to Mr. Southard, the Secretary of Navy, saying the language was too strong. Jackson recast the communication. It got out that Houston could "handle" Jackson, an accomplishment claimed for few men.

Henry Clay was the bete noire of the Jackson following and the most active in countermining the Jackson moves for 1828. With the Southard matter still in delicate balance, Houston received from the Hermitage an allusion to the Secretary of State. "I have lately got an intimation of some of his secrete movements; which, if I can reach with positive & responsible proof, I will wield to his political, & perhaps, to his actual Destruction—he is certainly the bases[t], meanest scoundrel that ever disgraced the image of his god—nothing too mean or low for him to condescend to to secretly carry his cowardly & base slander into effect; even the aged and Virtuous female is not free from his secrete combinations of base slander— but enough — you know me . . . retributive justice will visit him and his pander\_er]s heads. 9 * 12 The campaign was warming up.

Sam Houston did know his patron. He knew that he kept in order the pistols with which he had killed one man for slandering Mrs. Jackson. But the thought of shooting oneself into the presidency had so little besides novelty to recommend it, that Jackson's advisers were cold to the idea. Moreover, Mr. Clay had just put a bullet through the coat-tails of Jackson's friend, John Randolph, of Virginia.

The opposition continued its assaults on the character of "Aunt Rachel," as Sam Houston affectionately called the wife of his patron. These reached a climax when the unintentional irregularity of the General's marriage was made the subject of a contemptible allusion by Adams's organ, the National Journal. Duff Green replied in his United States Telegraph with tales of Mr. Adams's private life that were the product of an equally creative imagination. Pleased as Punch, Green wrote to Jackson of what had been done. "Let her [Mrs. Jackson] rejoice—her vindication is complete. . . . The whole Adams corps was thrown into consternation."

This was not the kind of vindication Jackson wished. He told Green to be truthful. "Female character should never be introduced by my friends unless attack should continue . , T

on Mrs. J. and then only by way of Just retaliation upon the known guilty. . . . I never war against females & it is only the base & cowardly that do." Whereupon, each side having had its moment, the petticoats were nervously restored to the comparative privacy of the whispering gallery.

The theater of our national affairs did not remain an Eveless Eden long enough to become a bore. The choice of her father's tavern house as a Jackson stamping-ground placed Peggy O'Neale in a position to enlarge the scope of her already comprehensive acquaintance. She charmed the old General. She won the heart of Aunt Rachel, and was not unattractive to the critical eye of an elegant widower who was assisting the Jackson fortunes in New York—Mr. Martin Van Buren.

But General Jackson's health was the important thing now. The candidate was ailing and had openly declared for a single term. This made the selection of a vice-president a matter of especial interest, since it was Jackson's plan to promote his vice-president in 1832. There were two candidates for vice-president between whose claims the Jackson leaders themselves were divided. Ostensibly the General was neutral, but the world knew he had not abandoned his old friendship for John C. Calhoun. As Secretary of War, Mr. Calhoun was understood to have supported Jackson in his Florida campaign. The General could not forget such an act of accommodation. On the other hand, he did nothing to check his supporters who were booming Governor DeWitt Clinton, of New York.

Sam Houston was for Clinton, naturally. Eaton was for Clinton; so were Martin Van Buren and the other New Yorkers in the Jackson camp, including Samuel Swartwout, one-time dispatch rider for Aaron Burr. Major William B. Lewis, Jackson's personal man Friday and inseparable companion, also cast his lot with the easterner. Still, the anti-Calhoun

wing failed to gain much ground. The Clinton people were getting uneasy when Sam Houston laid his hands on a letter that revived their hopes.

This communication was written in 1818 by President Monroe to the Secretary of War, Mr. Calhoun. It made clear that Calhoun dM not approve of General Jackson's highhanded invasion of Florida. There were phases of the Florida campaign, concerning which Jackson said as little as possible, except to intimate that he had merely taken the steps necessary for the ends desired by the administration. Perceiving a chance to ride into the presidency on the tail of Jackson's kite, Mr. Calhoun had done nothing to damage this impression.

Sam Houston is said to have kept this letter under cover for a year, presumably awaiting the right moment to present it at the Hermitage. This came early in 1827. The effect was "like electricity," as Duff Green might have said. "It smelled so much of deception," wrote Jackson, "that my hair stood on end for an hour." Calhoun had been playing him false all these years. There was a great stir, but Calhoun and his supporters kept it under cover. Calhoun protested that the letter had been stolen, and the real villain was made out to be Mr. Monroe. But Jackson was not ungrateful to Sam Houston for his interest.

The national campaign thundered on its way. In the midst of it, Houston was elected governor of Tennessee which transferred his activities from O'Neale's tavern to scenes less remote from the Hermitage. In this favored position, he continued to fight Calhoun. There was a plan to induce William H. Crawford, who was also in the Monroe Cabinet, to confirm Sam Houston's disclosure of Calhoun's attitude on Florida, but before it could be executed Governor Clinton died, rendering the Calhoun opposition leaderless. An attempt to rally about Martin Van Buren was unrealized. Mr. Calhoun was nominated and elected with the Jackson landslide.

But the anti-Calhounists were not ignored. Mr. Van Buren was to be Secretarv of State. John H. Eaton was to be Sec-

retary of War. And as Andrew Jackson's friend and personal confidant, the handsome young Governor of Tennessee found himself with his feet on the steps of the temple.

8

In the closing weeks of the campaign, the O'Neale tavern was a gay as well as a busy place. Upon this scene intruded a messenger from the Navy Department to say that Purser Timberlake was dead. He had cut his throat while on a Mediterranean cruise. No official explanation of the act was offered, but Washington gossip found a motive in his wife's affair with the Senator from Tennessee, although actually the Purser's depression appears to have been caused by a shortage in the accounts of his ship, the celebrated Constitution.

The public mind honored the deceased with a racy if transient notice of obituary, and lost him in the rush of the campaign. Within a few weeks the incident was so completely submerged that polite Washington would have been surprised to know that Senator Eaton privately had confessed "many an anxious and distressed moment" on account of it. For polite Washington mistakenly assumed the Purser's passing to have simplified matters for the Senator, who had already shown substantial proofs of his good-will toward the O'Neales. In fact the O'Neale tavern, though it sometimes still went by its old name, was now properly Gadsby's Hotel. When the Major, Peg's father, encountered money troubles Eaton had bought the inn to help him out, selling it to Gadsby.

The death of Mr. Timberlake did not simplify matters for Senator Eaton. It complicated them. The complication arose, the Senator wrote in great confidence, from an impulse to marry Peg and "snatch her from that injustice" done her name by "the City gossipers who attend to everybody's reputation ... to the neglect of their own." That is what the Senator wrote. It is not what he meant, as the complete text of his letter, written during one of those "distressed" moments,

shows. The Senator wished to avoid a marriage and after ransacking his wits for a way out, he finally went to Jackson with the plea that there would be "talk" that would work to the injury of the new administration, of which Eaton was to be a part. The Senator confessed that it took time to acquire courage to face Jackson in an effort to obtain his sanction to a "postponement" of the wedding on such grounds. 13

The interview took place at the Hermitage. Major Eaton assured the President-Elect that Peg's "own merits" as well as "considerations of honor" would impel him "at a proper time [italics Eaton's] ... to tender her the offer" of marriage. Even then there would be consequences. "The impossibility of escaping detraction and slander was too well credenced to me," the Senator went on, "in the abuse of those more meritorious and deserving that [than] I ever could hope to be." 14

Eaton's uncertainty as to Jackson's attitude was well founded. Old Hickory would hear of no delay. The nervous allusion to the manufactured scandal over Jackson's own marriage availed as little as one less upset in mind than Senator Eaton might have expected. Jackson ordered Eaton to marry Peg at once, and the gossips be damned.

The involuntary suitor returned to Washington. He saw Peg and a wedding was spoken of to take place, somewhat vaguely, "after the adjournment." Senator Eaton then would be a Cabinet officer—and anything might happen. But no sooner had this improvisation been arranged than Eaton received by the hand of Judge Isacks, late of the literary bureau, a letter from Jackson telling Eaton to marry Peg "forthwith" or "change your residence." Eaton wrote a labored epistle of "gratitude." "Your admonition shall be regarded. ... In the first week of January ... an honorable discharge of duty to myself and to her shall be met, and more than this . . . I rendered a happy and contented man." 15

The announcement of the betrothal bowled over Washington, which, in its agitation, passed Major Eaton on to posterity

adorned with a reputation for undiscriminating gallantry that is undeserved.

In Albany, New York, Mr. Van Buren read the tidings in a New Year's note from a congressman friend in the capital. "May you live a thousand years and always have ... a thousand sweethearts—and not one applicant for office. . . . La Belle Hortense thinks she would like to live in the palace again. . . . She will be here in February. . . . Poor Eaton

is to be married tonight to Mrs. T ! There is a vulgar

saying of some vulgar man, I believe Swift, on such unions—

about using a certain household [sic] an d then putting it

on one's head. The last sentence prevents me signing my name." 16 This delicacy has deprived the world of an autograph—and he wrote a lovely hand—of Mr. Churchill C. Cambreleng, than whom none was more au courant with the smart talk of the Washington haute monde.

Poor Eaton, indeed! General Jackson had laid the foundation for his house of cards. Its collapse flung careers about like autumn leaves.

CHAPTER VI

Six Feet Six

"Present me," Andrew Jackson wrote to Representative Houston in November of 1826, "to Mr. John Randolph "

Mr. Randolph was wearing a new coat now, the gift of Henry Clay as reparation for the damage the Secretary had done to the Senator's wardrobe with a bullet. But surely this was unknown to Jackson, already sufficiently chagrined over Randolph's poor marksmanship.

"Present me to Mr. John Randolph. . . . You may suggest a desire I have of obtaining a good filly got by Sir Archey and a full bred by the dam side. If he has a filly of this description . . . that he can sell for $300 or under . . . and you will bring her out I will be prompt in remitting him the amount." And when that was done: "Capt. A. J. Donelson who has engaged my stud colts desires me to say to you if a faithfull keeper of horses can be got he will give them good wages, a freeman of colour, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty of standing wages . . . besides other privileges." 1

More august personages than Representative Houston would have flown to perform services such as these. Their asking bore the stamp of the old General's affection, and every one knew how far Andrew Jackson would go for a friend. Sam Houston possessed a nature sufficiently warm to be drawn to a man like that, and his reciprocation sometimes colored his official conduct.

Early in 1826 the postmastership of Nashville fell vacant. Jackson had a candidate, and Clay had one—in the person of John P. Erwin, editor of the Nashville Banner and Whig, Naturally, the Clay man must be headed off. "Attend to this business," 2 Jackson wrote Houston, and the Nashville post-mastership became a national issue. Houston did his best. He fought Erwin at every turn, writing the President that the Clay candidate was "not a man of fair and upright moral character," and accusing him on the floor of the House of "a want of integrity." Yet Erwin got the place, and Houston was warned to look out; whereupon he took up pistol practise on the outskirts of the capital.

This seemed a prudent thing to do. Houston was already involved in an affair of honor with a Tennesseean named Gibbs, and a duel seemed so likely that he had written a letter to be published "should I perish." "My firm and undeviating attachment to Genl Jackson has caused me all the enemies I have, and I glory in the firmness of my attachment. ... I will die proud in the assurance that I deserve, and possess his perfect confidence." 3

The affair with Gibbs did not come off, but on his return to Nashville, Houston received a note from Postmaster Erwin asking about the aspersions attributed to him. Houston stood by what he had said, which could only be construed as an invitation to fight. Nashville was Jackson-Houston ground, and Mr. Erwin had trouble finding a messenger to deliver his challenge, until Colonel Jo! n Smith T., as he called himself, a professional duelist from Missouri, alighted from a westbound stage. Houston named Colonel McGregor, of Nashville, as his second. With most of Nashville looking on Smith T. confronted McGregor in the public square.

"I have a communication from Colonel Erwin to General Houston, which I now hand you, sir," said the challenger's representative.

"General Houston can receive no communication from your hands because you are not a citizen of this state," McGregor replied.

Smith T. went away, and Houston and his friends were gathered in front of the Nashville Inn when Smith returned with General William A. White, a lawyer and veteran of the battle of New Orleans. Instead of seeking McGregor, Smith handed Erwin's message directly to Houston.

"Colonel," said White triumphantly to Smith, "I reckon he will not deny having received it."

Houston turned on his heel.

"I have not received it," he exclaimed, "I do not know its contents. I will not open it, but will refer its contents to Colonel McGregor. But I will receive one from you, General White, with pleasure."

"I will receive one from you, General Houston."

"The saddle is on the other horse, General, and that is enough to be understood between gentlemen."

"If I call on you there will be no shuffling, I suppose."

"Try me, sir," said Sam Houston. 4

But White had no idea of trying Houston. Days passed. Erwin evinced a disposition to transfer the controversy to the newspapers. Smith T. showed more spirit. He wrote to demand whether Houston's only reason for refusing to receive the challenge in the first instance was because Smith lived in another state. Houston replied that this was the only reason he had had at the time, but inquiry had given him ground for others, such as Smith's "reputed standing and character." To the amazement of every one, the Missouri bad man took a boat for the West.

This left White to hold the bag. "Knowing that a coward can not live except in disgrace and obscurity," he wrote a friend, "I did not hesitate as to my course." He challenged Houston on an academic point of honor which disavowed any feeling of personal animosity. Houston chose pistols at fifteen feet. As it had turned out, Houston was to meet the poorest

shot of three possible opponents, but the short distance was a concession to White's indifferent skill. At fifteen feet any one stood a chance of hitting a man of Houston's size.

The date set for the meeting allowed the contestants a week in which to improve their marksmanship. Sam Houston went to the experienced Jackson for advice. Old Hickory told him to bite on a bullet when he drew. It would help his aim. Houston practised for a while on the grounds of the Hermitage and then retired to the farm of Sanford Duncan, near the Kentucky line, to polish off his training.

Sanford Duncan had two pups named Andrew Jackson and Thomas Benton because they always were fighting each other. Houston noticed that Andrew usually came out on top, and took this to be a good omen. On the night of September 21, 1826, the party that was to accompany Houston to the field slept at the Duncan house. At three-forty in the morning, Houston was awakened by a barking dog. It was Andrew, the pup. Sam arose without disturbing his friends, tiptoed into the kitchen and began to mold bullets. As the first ball fell from the mold, a game cock crowed. Houston picked up the bullet and marking it on one side for the dog, and on the other side for the rooster, resolved to use it in his first fire.

At sunup the two parties met in a pasture just over the line in Kentucky. The ground was paced off. The principals took their places.

"Gentlemen, are you ready?"

"Ready, sir."

"Ready, sir."

"Fire! One, two, three, four."

Houston drew quickly and fired. White sank to the ground, shot through the groin. The Houston group started toward the Tennessee line when White called weakly. Houston returned and knelt beside the wounded man.

"General, you have killed me," White said.

"I am very sorry," Houston replied. "But you know it was forced upon me."

"I know it, and forgive you." 5

General White spent four months in bed. No one watched his progress closer or received assurances of his recovery with greater relief than Sam Houston. The Clfity faction in Kentucky made use of the duel in an effort to embarrass Jackson. A Kentucky grand jury indicted Houston for assault, but there was no arrest and the presiding officer at a political meeting in Tennessee introduced Houston with a heroic allusion to the affair with White. Sam Houston silenced the applause, said he was opposed to dueling, and declined to be honored as a duelist. "Thank God," he concluded, "my adversary was injured no worse." 6

3

Everything Sam Houston did redounded to the credit of his white-haired patron, who arranged another advancement for his protege. William Carroll was retiring from the governorship, having served three consecutive terms, the limit permitted by the constitution.

Billy Carroll was an interesting man. At New Orleans he had been Old Hickory's second in command. In Tennessee his tall, fastidiously groomed figure was as well known as that of Jackson himself. He was rich and ruthless. One glance from his steel-blue eyes had made and unmade senators. Friendship, which was everything to Jackson, was nothing to Carroll in politics. The only office the dictator cared for personally was the governorship. This was his passion. Sam Houston became the candidate of the Jackson democracy to fill in as governor for one term, after which Carroll would be eligible to resume the reins. Another of General Jackson's young men, Mr. James K. Polk, was to take Houston's place in the House and carry on the good work at Washington.

But the governorship was not to be kept in Jackson's hands without a fight. A little revolt against the grenadier methods of the old leader encouraged the Whigs, who put up Newton Cannon, a strong man.

Houston made an unprecedented campaign. He had been preparing for it for years, under Jackson's coaching. He was the best mixer in Tennessee. Log-rollings, barn-raisings and barbecues were his forte. On election day he closed his canvass with a tour of the polling places in Nashville. "Mounted on a superb dapple-gray horse he appeared unannounced," one dazzled spectator recorded, "... the observed of all observers."

It is no wonder. Sam had dressed for his public: bell-crowned, black beaver hat, standing collar and patent-leather, military stock, ruffled shirt, black satin vest and "shining" black trousers, gathered at the waist with legs full "the same size from seat to ankle." In place of a coat the broad shoulders were loosely draped with a "gorgeous" Indian hunting shirt, encircled by a beaded red sash with a polished metal clasp. His silk socks were lavishly embroidered and his pumps set off by silver buckles. 7

Judge Jo C. Guild has left a description of the man himself. "Houston stood six feet six inches in his socks, was of fine contour, a remarkably well proportioned man, and of commanding and gallant bearing; had a large, long head and face and his fine features were lit up by large eagle-looking eyes; possessed of a wonderful recollection of persons and names, a fine address and courtly manners and a magnetism approaching that of General Andrew Jackson. He enjoyed unbounded popularity among men and was a great favorite with the ladies." 8

Six feet six—an entire school of southwestern tradition confirms it, but the descriptive list of the War Department, wanting in imagination, and by no means incapable of error, undertakes to whittle Sam Houston's stature down to six feet and two inches. Guild knew Houston well, and the nature of their relations protects the Judge against a charge of intentional flattery. But no escaping it, there was something about this man that made light of yardsticks.

A probability of similar exaggeration exists in the report

of the election-day attire, though it was doubtless bizarre enough. Sam Houston's clothes were usually equal to the rococo tastes of his generation, but he did not wear Indian shirts in Washington, and he did not wear them in Nashville when he danced with Miss Anne Hanna, who has enriched history with the observation that "two classes of people pursued Sam Houston all his life—artists and women." 9

But Nashville was not composed exclusively of persons as discriminating as Miss Anne Hanna. Nashville was the backwoods capital of a backwoods state. Of its population of five thousand, one thousand were negro slaves. The town made a ragged pattern about a public square which crowned a noble bluff overlooking the steamboat landing. In the square stood the court-house, fenced by a hitch-rail. The Nashville Inn was on one side of the square and the City Hotel on another. These places of entertainment served the notable of two generations. The Inn with its imposing three-story colonnade was the headquarters of the Jackson democracy, while all the important Whigs hung up their saddle-bags at the City Hotel.

Sam Houston lived at the Inn. The vacant lot next door was reserved for cock-fights. Billiards was also a craze with the quality until the Legislature, which convened at seven o'clock in the morning, levied a tax of one thousand dollars a table on the wicked luxury. But not until later did this revolutionary body abolish the stocks, whipping-post and branding-iron for minor offenders, and the penalty of death without benefit of clergy for stealing a horse. The executioner's fee at a hanging was two dollars and fifty cents. Nashville's Clover Bottom race-track was one of the best known in the West-Patrons were carried thither in a yellow coach "fitted up in all the style of Philadelphia." Nine miles east of town was Jackson's Hermitage, the finest residence in Tennessee.

The returns were slow coming in. The City Hotel people were more than hopeful at first. In the strong Jackson terri-

tory of Middle and West Tennessee, Cannon ran surprisingly well. In East Tennessee Jackson was weak due to resentment over the removal of the state capital from Knoxville. The Whigs needed only a small plurality from this territory to overcome the slender lead Houston held in the sections where Jackson was normally invincible. East Tennessee, however, returned great majorities for its favorite son, Sam Houston, and the final tally was 44,426 votes for him to 33,410 for Cannon. It was a personal triumph rather than a victory for William Carroll's 1 machine.

The Governor-Elect lost no time m starting for Knoxville on his dapple-gray horse to thank his friends in the East. They gave him a banquet at the Widow Jackson's tavern "and it is only necessary to say," remarked the Knoxville Register, "that Mrs. Jackson had it in a stile suited to the occasion. . . . The ladies generally of the town, and between fifty and sixty gentlemen attended. . . . The ladies having withdrawn from the table to other seats*. . . . and the cloth being removed . . . toasts were drunk."

The schedule called for thirteen of these, with incidental music. Glasses were drained to "Major-General Houston— Distinguished in the social circle by the affability of his manners, in war by the intrepidity of his character, and in public life, by the integrity of his course." (Music, The Wounded Hussar.) Others of the illustrious were remembered and the formal program ended on a chivalrous note: "To the ladies— by their sweet names we wave the sword on high, and swear for them to live, for them to die."

But the evening was young. Pryor Lea, Esquire, arose to say that the ladies present had asked him to deliver "for them a sentiment." Congressman Lea turned to the guest of the evening. "I pledge you, General Houston, that the ladies will not forget the brave." Sam Houston was on his feet, glass in hand. "The Fair of Tennessee" he said. "Their charms cannot be surpassed by the valor of her sons" There were forty-two more toasts. Spencer Jarnagin, Esquire, an alumnus of Porter

Academy at Maryville, had the last word. "Mrs. Jackson," he said. "May all festive boards have such a land lady." 10

In the Governor's chair Sam Houston continued to improve his hold on popular favor. When Jackson was elected president, Tennessee became politically the most important state in the Union. This made the Governor of Tennessee, whoever he might be, a national figure. Sam Houston was equal to the occasion. Jackson's health gave an interesting drift to speculation. "J n ... is wearing away rapidly," wrote Alfred Balch, who lived near the Hermitage. "Already J ns successor is as much spoken of as J ns late success." Then Aunt Rachel died. It seemed as if the old soldier could not survive this blow. He rallied, but was not the same man. Sam Houston may very well have reflected that the effacement of Mr. Calhoun might now do more than assuage an old resentment.

Houston's name took its place on the inevitable list of "possibilities." As a state executive he was independent and levelheaded. He made no mistakes for adversaries to seize upon, and his growing prestige filled the stage. He cut away from the Carroll wing, and as his term drew near the close, showed no sign of preparing to relinquish the office in which he had entrenched himself. Jackson viewed this state of affairs with a strange complacency, and Billy Carroll was disturbed. From distant parts of the country the gaze of observers fell upon the rising figure in the West, idol of the politically consecrated populace of Tennessee. He seemed to be the Man of Destiny that many were looking for. The era had dawned that was to see three men from Tennessee attain the white "Castle" on Pennsylvania Avenue. Two of these were to step up from the Governor's chair. With Tennessee and Tennesseeans favored of the gods, one so disinclined to exaggeration as Judge Guild saw Sam Houston headed for the presidency.

The Governor appeared to want only one thing desirable for political advancement. Sam Houston was thirty-five years old. There had been too much toasting the ladies and too many

tales of a variety the Governor's reputation for gallantry rendered inescapable. "I have as usual had 'a small blow up.' What the devil is the matter with the gals I cant say but there has been hell to pay and no pitch hot !' m The situation worried Houston's friends whose earnest counsel was to marry and settle down. Plenty of time for that, said Sam, who was credited with the ability to take his pick of the highly eligible damsels who beautified Mrs. James K. Polk's cotillions. But as a matter of fact the gallant Governor was deeply and miserably in love—a circumstance at length revealed to an anxious friend, Congressman John Marable, in a jocose note that sought to disguise the tenderness that was in the writer's heart. "May God bless you, and it may be that I will splice myself with a rib. Thine ever, Sam Houston." 12

Within a fortnight Colonel and Mrs. John Allen, of Gallatin, had the honor to announce the forthcoming marriage of their daughter, Eliza, to General Sam Houston. The Aliens of Gallatin! The Governor's friends were overjoyed. The Carroll people pegged down the flaps of their tents and silently whetted their knives.

CHAPTER VII

Sic Transit

The President-Elect gave the match his blessing and took the road to Washington. General'Jackson had known Eliza Allen from babyhood. She was the eldest child of his old friend, John Allen, of Sumner County, the head of a family much of whose history is involved with the early annals of Middle Tennessee. Eliza's uncles, Robert and Campbell Allen, served under Jackson in the War of 1812, Robert commanding a regiment of volunteers. Later Robert went to Congress where he met Sam Houston. Representative Houston became an occasional guest of Colonel John Allen's plantation home in a bend of the Cumberland three miles south of Gallatin. The Allen house was a gay one at all times, and during the racing at the Gallatin track, in the days when Old Hickory himself was Tennessee's first patron of the turf, it was headquarters for General Jackson and his entourage.

Sam Houston enjoyed the hospitality of the big house and the lively society of the Cumberland Valley, celebrated beyond any region in Tennessee for its blue-grass. Colonel Allen liked his brother's pleasing young friend and made him welcome. In point of fact, the Colonel had a weakness for notables.

Eliza did not come in for a great deal of attention at first, being not more than thirteen years old—a thoughtful, self-contained little girl with large blue eyes and yellow hair. Seasons went by, Sam Houston dropping in at the Allen place

as he passed and repassed between Tennessee and Washington, threading his way from backwoods obscurity to the threshold of national affairs. One day he looked into Eliza's blue eyes and ceased to speak to her of childish things.

The Governor had not been the first to perceive that the blonde girl had grown up. He had a rival. But above all the women he had known Sam Houston desired Eliza, and meant to win her.

The Allen family found it impossible to be indifferent to a connection so agreeable, but Eliza was simply bewildered to find this grown man, who had been a sort of adult confidant and comrade, changed to the role of suitor. Moreover, Eliza thought her heart no longer hers to give.

But Eliza's was an age of sheltered daughters. There were family councils in the manor that sat on a knoll by the curving Cumberland: a confused and immature girl encircled by many elders who said many things no girl possibly could understand.

Still, the Governor had something in his favor aside from position, prospects and the family endorsement. His manners were charming; his past was romantic and a little mysterious; he was handsome and there was fire in his wooing. Did he not desert the splendid society of Nashville, did he not foresake grave matters of state in the critical days of Andrew Jackson's fight for the presidency to post all the way to Gallatin for an hour with his adored? What other Tennessee girl of eighteen could say as much for the devotion of a suitor?

One such hour was somehow enchanted. On an evening when the woods that bordered the Cumberland were aflame with the emotional colors of autumn, the enormous passion of Sam Houston's hot words went home. The blonde girl was swept away. An image melted from her mind, and Eliza Allen was persuaded that she loved this handsome giant, this devastating Man of Destiny.

No other woman by such womanly means, or by any means, has so strangely changed the face of American history.

At candle-light on the twenty-second day of January, 1829, Colonel Allen conducted his daughter down the great staircase to her place beside the Governor of Tennessee. Before a houseful of the socially eligible and Reverend William Hume, pastor to the Presbyterian aristocracy of Nashvilje, Eliza Allen and Sam Houston exchanged the wedding vows.

Next afternoon the Governor and his bride set out for Nashville on horseback, but the weather turned blustery and they stopped overnight at Locust Grove, the manor of Robert Martin on the Gallatin Pike, a short hour's ride from the capital. The day following they rode into town, were entertained for a few days at the residence of Houston's cousin, Robert McEwen, and then moved to the Nashville Inn. They went about little, which Mrs. McEwen attributed to a desire to be alone together; she had never seen a more affectionate couple.

Moreover, public affairs had intruded upon the honeymoon. The day before the wedding the Banner and Whig contained a three-line item to the effect that William Carroll would be a candidate for governor in the August election. Nine days later the Banner and Whig contained another three-line squib.

"We are requested to announce the present Governor of Tennessee, Honorable Samuel Houston, is a candidate for reelection."

In campaign literature "Samuel" was an innovation. It is impossible, however, to ascertain whether the Governor was married as "Samuel" or as "Sam." The papers are missing from the yellowed file of licenses and returns for the year 1829, which a dark closet and a coverlet of dust shield from casual eyes in the old brick court-house at Gallatin. Therefore, one is unable to bring this detail of official evidence to bear upon the question whether, as stated in certain quarters at the time, Sam Houston married Eliza Allen to break with the past and

prepare himself for the decorous atmosphere of higher estates that seemed to lie in the path of his star.

The contest for the governorship overshadowed every other topic in Tennessee. Sam Houston had dared to challenge the boss. The question on every lip was: Where will Jackson stand in the battle between his lieutenants?

A direct answer was not forthcoming, but the public could read the signs. The Houston people wore a confident air— never more so than when the question of Jackson's position-was raised. The Carroll people seemed anxious to exclude the President's name from "local issues." The fact is that Jackson had decided to elect Sam Houston, and Houston had tacitly conveyed this to some of his friends.

Thus the two men marshaled and warily maneuvered their forces. Both were masters of the usual arts of political warfare : Carroll at his best in a room manipulating combinations, Houston at his best out-of-doors handling a crowd. But Carroll was no weakling, and odds against him meant strength to his arm. Besides, he was furiously angry, and felt himself tricked by a man he had "made."

The campaign opened at Cockrell's Spring on Saturday afternoon, the eleventh of April. Governor Houston and ex-Governor Carroll met on the stump, and the countryside was out to see the fun. Houston had hit upon a scheme to swell the attendance and possibly turn up some useful political information. He asked Colonel Willoughby Williams, the sheriff of Davidson County, in which Nashville is located, to muster a battalion of the militia at Cockrell's Spring. Williams was also to pass through the crowd during the flow of oratory and find out what the voters were saying.

When the meeting was over, the Sheriff and the Governor mounted their horses and rode from the muster ground, deep in conversation. Williams had good news. The crowd was for Houston. Near Nashville Houston stopped off at the residence of John Boyd. Williams returned to his command, leaving Houston, he said, "in high spirits."