nine barrels of liquor] ... to his own residence" and keep them for his private use. 8

Washington had spoken with firmness and courtesy. The Wigwam Neosho replied in like tone, as equal to equal. Washington's demands, Sam Houston said, had not "materially changed" his situation. He had no intention of selling liquor to Indians. But this arose from moral compunctions of his own and not from a spirit of obedience to the intercourse laws or the Constitution of the United States, as "I consider them having no kind of bearing on my case." How could they? Houston was not a citizen of the United States and had "removed without the jurisdictional limits . . . beyond the bounds of all legal process" thereof. The power of Congress to regulate trade and intercourse with Indians was designed to exclude "the influence of foreign [European] nations from among the Indians" and not to curb the legitimate rights of any tribesman.

The government's invitation to apply for a trader's license was respectfully declined. Any other course would compromise the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation. "It would be an acknowledgement that their act of naturalization was . . . void, and that as a nation they had no rights in community, and by their boasted advantages acquired by treaty . . . had only contrived themselves in the hopeless position of vassalage. . . . With great respect I have the honor to be Your Obt. Servant." 9

Bold words. Suppose Washington should chance to compare them with the words that the chief, Oo-loo-te-ka, had sent a trusted envoy to speak to the Georgia Cherokees. "Make a wall to the east . . . preserve the sinking race of native Americans from extinction." Comparison was possible, for by means unknown, Oo-loo-te-ka's remarkable letter had found its way into the files of the War Department. If The Raven did not propose to make a wall to the east, what did he propose?

Washington pondered the case. Secretary Eaton asked Attorney-General Berrien for a ruling in the matter, indicat-

ing the embarrassing consequences that would ensue if Houston were upheld. 10 In a lengthy opinion Mr. Berrien did as much for his Cabinet colleague as circumstances permitted. He "thought" Sam Houston's position untenable. The Cherokees enjoyed "peculiar privileges." They held their land by a title "different from the ordinary Indian title of occupancy." Nevertheless, "the grant to them is a grant of soil and not of sovereignty." Therefore, Sam Houston could not "by establishing himself within the limits of this tribe, and incorporating himself with it . . . withdraw himself from the operation of the laws of the United States." 11

Mr. Berrien's opinion was not final, however. As he wrote, the Supreme Court of the United States was considering the identical question that Sam Houston had raised. The eastern Cherokees, fighting to retain their lands, had brought suit, as a foreign nation, against the state of Georgia. Georgia contended that the Cherokee Nation was not a foreign nation and therefore was ineligible to sue a state of the Federal Union. The decision of the Supreme Court was awaited in suspense. It was made public in January of 1831, a month after the ruling of Mr. Berrien.

The court was divided. The opinion of Justices Thompson and Story recited that as treaties never suspended empowered the Cherokees to declare war and make peace, to regulate their internal affairs and to send to Washington a "delegate" whose rank was that of an ambassador, the Cherokee Nation of Indians was sovereign and independent, and within the meaning of the Constitution, a foreign state.

This supported the logic behind the whisky maneuvers of Sam Houston. It was not, however, the prevailing opinion of the court. Chief Justice Marshall and the four remaining justices held the Cherokees to be a "domestic" and "dependent" nation, which therefore had not the right to sue the state of Georgia. This overthrew the contentions of Houston and answered the most delicate question that has been raised in the course of our Indian relations.

"The fruit of this world turns to ashes and the charm of life is broken," wrote Sam Houston. 12 The days of tranquillity at the woodland wigwam were at an end. The year of 1831 saw the nadir of Houston's fortunes. The sustaining passion for activity that lifted him out of himself during his first months in the Indian country had failed. In his own words he "buried his sorrows in the flowing bowl . . . gave himself up to the fatal enchantress" alcohol. 13 The eagle's wings had drooped.

The Cherokees conferred a new name on their white counselor—Oo-tse-tee Ar-dee-tah-skee, which means Big Drunk. 14 When Big Drunk was in character a retinue of loyal Cherokees would follow him about to forestall complications, but not always with success. A young white clerk at Houston's trading-post displeased his employer and was challenged to a duel. Friends of Houston protested that the clerk's social station precluded him from participation in an affair of honor.

"I've always treated him as a gentleman," roared Houston, "and I'll treat him as a gentleman now."

This improved the morale of the clerk. He was ready to fight.

The meeting took place, and at the count both parties fired. Neither was hit, and seconds intervening persuaded challenger and challenged that honor had been vindicated. But Houston did not learn for some time afterward, if ever, that neither weapon was charged with ball ammunition.

On another occasion Houston quarreled with his foster-father and struck the old man. Others who were near attempted to seize The Raven and succeeded only after they had pummeled him unconscious. The old Chief was greatly distressed over the necessity of this extremity and bathed his errant son's bruises. Overwhelmed by remorse The Raven made a formal apology before the National Council. 15

Whether Sam Houston complied with the War Department

order, the constitutionality of which the Supreme Court's decision upheld, to apply for a trader's license, is disclosed in no record discovered by this writer. The presumption is that he did—not that it matters. When Sam Houston alluded, as he often did, to the government's special use of the waters of destruction as an aid to negotiation with Indians, he spoke, in a measure, from close experience. Taking a base view of the matter, what better disposition could the Government have made of those nine barrels of liquor than to let Sam Houston take them home and drink them up?

His Indian writings lost coherency in a purple haze of controversy in which the author was displayed as "a Greeneyed monster ... a slanderer of man and deceiver of woman" who "opposed the views of the United States" and fomented "discord" among the tribes "by speaking disrespectfully of their Agents." 16 Houston being on the unpopular side of the Indian question, eastern papers copied more of this sort of thing than of the embarrassing accusations they were designed to refute. His influence over the Indians wavered and some practical jokers among the Cherokees led to his place in the council house at Tah-lon-tee-skee a grotesquely painted negro tricked out in exaggerated imitation of The Raven's style of dress.

The year was a blurred gyration from place to place, from scheme to scheme. For some time Houston had been involved in a deal to purchase a salt works on the Neosho with the idea of making a million dollars. This blended into a reckless impulse to reclaim the reins of political power in Tennessee, entailing a foolhardy trip to Nashville, a ridiculous letter to the newspapers 17 and a painful time for Houston's friends. A permanent result of the visit was a portrait for which Houston posed as Marius amid the ruins of Carthage. This smashing Old Hickory of the Romans had always appealed to Houston, and I hope it is not too much to fancy the possible inspiration of the painting: Houston in the wilderness approached, like Marius by the lieutenant of Sextilius, and making answer, "Go

tell that you have seen Caius Marius sitting in exile among the ruins of Carthage!"

Leaving Tennessee, "through with civilization forever," the unhappy man paused at Fort Smith to dicker with a whisky runner in broken English and then to plunge dangerously into Indian politics. The National Council of the Cherokees ratified the grant of citizenship previously bestowed by a special committee. There was a new gesture toward the West smacking of Oo-loo-te-ka's earlier visions of empire. Houston projected a trip to the plains with Chouteau to cultivate friendly relations with the wild tribes. This proposal faded in favor of a private expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

The Rocky Mountain project was something that recurred and recurred. Houston loved to talk about it. Two years before this talk had thrilled the Irish adventurer, Haralson. Half-breed Watt Webber was next to fall under the spell. He began accumulating capital for the trip. At present Houston had an appreciative listener in Captain Bonneville of the Cantonment Gibson garrison. Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville was born in France during the Terror and had been private secretary to the Marquis de Lafayette during his second visit to the United States. A shelf of Latin and Greek, the plays of Racine and poems of Maitre Francois Villon lined a wall of his cabin in Officer's Row. Bonneville had long yearned to explore the Far West. Between the classics, the Rocky Mountain scheme and a bottle on the table, Houston and the vibrant baldheaded little Frenchman would talk all night. 18

Schemes, dreams, fancies, phantoms. . . . There was another recurring vision about which Sam Houston dared not speak too much: Texas. The very necessity for discretion may explain the vitality of any fragment of rumor touching Texas. The thing was intangible, but it was there. It formed the most seductive part of the aura of romance and enigma that overhung the exile and kept people juggling with his name from the Back Bay of Boston to the camps by the Rio de los Brazos de Dios.

Sam Houston's passion for justice burned as fiercely as ever. Few men did more to subvert his plans than Colonel Arbuckle and Captain Vashon, yet no criticism of either ever passed Houston's lips, because he knew them to be honorable men and honest public servants. The same passion inspired his impulsive efforts in behalf of proud old Nathaniel Pryor, of the Three Forks, a first cousin of the Governor of Virginia. During the final stages of Houston's effort to force recognition of Cherokee sovereignty, he was urging at the same time the appointment of Captain Pryor to the Indian service when such an appointment would surely raise another obstacle to any attempt to diminish the government's authority among the Indians. But he knew Pryor to be a deserving man who would treat the Indians decently.

"It is impossible for me," Houston wrote Secretary Eaton, "ever to wish, or solicit, any patronage from the Government for myself, or anyone connected with me—but to see a brave, honest, honorable and faithful servant of that country, which I once claimed as my own — in poverty with spirit half broken by neglect I must be permitted to ask something in his behalf!" 19 He also wrote to Jackson setting forth Pryor's unique qualifications, and induced Arbuckle to write. Pryor received a five-hundred-dollar-a-year place, but died shortly afterward.

Sam Houston's enemies were never quite sure where they stood. The man was inconsistent: consider his refusal to drink with an Indian and his opposition to the Cherokee ball plays, which had become orgies of Roman proportions. Big Drunk went on his toots alone, or at Cantonment Gibson where he was always welcome at the bachelor officers' mess. Old accounts tell of casual strollers along the paths about the post stepping aside to avoid the buckskin-clad form of the squaw-man unconscious among tree-stumps.

With his visible fortunes at their lowest ebb, friends remained who were loyal and enemies who were afraid of Sam Houston. Officers' wives still lingered at their calico-curtained windows for a glimpse of the solitary figure whose tremendous

downfall had been encompassed by a love-affair, of which, in all his rambling talk, he never spoke. They saw him lost in the contemplation of a little buckskin sack that was suspended by a thong about his neck. Mumbling to a Cherokee witch charm! A natural error, perhaps; but in reality the little sack contained Eliza Allen's engagement ring. The Raven avoided the society of the officers' ladies, but eyes no less wistful on that account strained to follow the dimmed star of an unfortunate gentleman.

5

In August of the dark year a letter from Tennessee was delivered at the Wigwam Neosho. In September Sam Houston climbed the slope of Baker's Creek Valley in Blount County to the porticoed house on the hillside. There he wept at the bedside of a "heroine," his mother. Elizabeth Houston pressed the hand that wore another ring, with a motto in it. And then she died.

In October Sam Houston was back at the Wigwam. In November he sat with the National Council of the Cherokees. In December he was on his way east again. A change had come over The Raven. There are times when a man must stand up.

CHAPTER Xni A Hickory Cane

Black Coat, the second Chief, was in charge of the Cherokee delegation with which Sam Houston departed for Washington in December of 1831. Although Houston was not officially a member of the mission, the delegates' instructions and the petition they carried "To Andrew Jackson, Great Father" were in his handwriting. The latter conveyed a recital of grievances, with a paragraph tucked in to regularize a considerable purchase of land Houston had made from "Chouteau's half-breed Indian bastard children," as Agent Vashon phrased it, disliking ambiguities. 1

For the journey the venerable Creek Chief, Opoth-ley-ahola, gave Houston a handsome buckskin coat with a beaver collar and a hunting knife to adorn the belt. The travelers stopped off at Nashville and Houston showed them through the Hermitage. While inspecting the grounds he used the new knife to cut a hickory sapling about as big around as a man's thumb and fashion himself a walking cane. The party reached Washington in January of 1832 and accommodated themselves at Brown's Indian Queen Hotel in Pennsylvania Avenue. A few days later Houston gave the cane to a friend in Georgetown.

There had been changes in Washington since Houston's last visit. Peggy Eaton was not in town and the place was duller for it. She was in Florida where her husband, by grace of Andrew Jackson, was governor. Echoes of the piquant

Peg's political disturbances still resounded in the marble halls, however, as on March 31, 1832, when William Stanbery, Member of Congress from Ohio, in the course of a broad criticism of the Administration, inquired, "Was not the late Secretary of War removed because of his attempt fraudulently to give Governor Houston the contract for Indian rations?" 2

The words of Mr. Stanbery brought Houston to the foyer of the House chamber determined to "settle" the matter there, but James K. Polk hustled him out into the fresh air. Houston then sent Representative Cave Johnson, of Tennessee, to Stanbery with a note containing the formal inquiries that etiquette required to precede a challenge to a duel. Johnson was made to promise, however, that should Stanbery refuse to receive the note he would not assume the quarrel himself. Stanbery declined to reply to "a note signed Sam Houston." "I'll introduce myself to the damned rascal," said Houston. Mr. Stanbery armed himself with two pistols. Houston put away his evil-looking knife and asked his Georgetown friend if he could take back the cane for a few days.

On the evening of April thirteenth Houston, Senator Buck' ner, of Missouri, and Representative Blair, of Tennessee, were chatting with Senator Felix Grundy in the latter's room. Houston took his leave, and Buckner and Blair joined him in a walk along the Avenue. The three had covered about half the distance to Brown's Hotel when Blair recognized Congressman Stanbery crossing the street. Whereupon, Mr. Blair turned and walked "rapidly" away.

It was dark, except for the dim street-lamps. Houston approached the man in the street. "Are you Mr. Stanbery?" he asked politely.

"Yes, sir," replied the latter.

"Then you are a damned rascal," exclaimed Houston, slamming the Ohioan on the head with the hickory cane.

Stanbery was almost as large a man as Houston. He threw up his hands. "Oh, don't!" he cried, but Housion continued to rain blows and Stanbery turned, as Senator Buck-ner thought, to run. Houston leaped on his opponent's back and dragged him down. The two rolled on the pavement, Stanbery yelling for help. Houston could not hold and punch at the same time, his right arm having been useless in such emergencies since the battle of To-ho-pe-ka. Stanbery managed to draw one of his pistols. He pressed it against Houston's chest.

Buckner heard the gunlock snap, saw the flint strike fire. But the charge did not explode, and Houston tore the weapon from Stanbery's grasp. Houston then stood up, landed a few more licks with the cane and, as a finishing touch, lifted the Congressman's feet in the air and "struck him elsewhere" as Senator Buckner rendered it in his evidence at Houston's trial, ladies being present.

MOST DARING OUTRAGE AND ASSAULT

was the head-line in General Duff Green's United States Telegraph, followed by brutal details. But the article wound up with observations which Houston himself could hardly have improved upon.

"What gives more importance to this transaction is the known relation that Houston bears to the President of the United States. . . . He was the individual who placed in the hands of General Jackson Mr. Monroe's letter to Mr. Calhoun that made so important a part of 'the correspondence' between the President and Vice President. Although he left Tennessee under circumstances that produced the greatest excitement, took up his residence among the Indians and adopted their costume and habits; and although the proof that he contemplated a fraud upon the government is conclusive, yet . . . he is still received at the Executive Mansion and treated with the kindness and hospitality of an old favorite. . . . We have long seen, that tactics of the Nashville school were to be transferred to Washington and that the

Voice of truth was to be silenced by the dread of the assassin But we have not jet taken fear as our counsellor." 3

After this, further reference to a hickory cane cut at tht Hermitage was labor of supererogation. General Green, with his powerful newspaper, had quit the Jackson entourage with Mr. Calhoun. Bursting to even the score, he raised the trouncing of Stanbery greatly above the altitude of a common brawl.

3

From his bed Mr. Stanbery dispatched a note to Andrew Stevenson, the Speaker of the House, describing how he had been "waylaid in the street . . . attacked, knocked down by a bludgeon and severely bruised and wounded by Samuel Houston, late of Tennessee, for words spoken in my place in the House of Representatives." This was read to the House, and a resolution was offered for the arrest of Houston.

This parliamentary move brought to his feet James K. Polk, the President's voice in the House of Representatives. Mr. Polk would not admit that the House had the power to arrest Sam Houston in the matter involved, but the vote was one hundred and forty-five to twenty-five for arrest.

On the following day the galleries were crowded and every member was in his seat when the prisoner, wearing his fur-collared buckskin coat and carrying his stick of Hermitage hickory, walked down the aisle of the House chamber beside the sergeant-of-arms. He halted before the Speaker's desk and bowed. Speaker Stevenson, a friend of the accused, read the formal arraignment. Houston asked for twenty-four hours in which to prepare his defense. He was granted forty-eight hours.

Houston reappeared with Francis Scott Key as his attorney, although the defendant virtually conducted his own case. Asked to plead to a charge of assaulting Representative Stanbery for words spoken in debate, Houston said he had not molested Mr. Stanbery for words spoken in the House, but for

remarks imputed to Mr. Stanbery by a newspaper. After vainly trying to get Mr. Stanbery to disavow or affirm the published statements, Houston added that on an "accidental" meeting he had given way to his feelings and struck the Congressman with "a common walking cane." This was interpreted as a plea of not guilty and the trial of Sam Houston before the bar of the House of Representatives was set to begin on April nineteenth.

It continued for a month, growing in public interest until everything else in the current news was eclipsed. Niles' Register, of Baltimore, which prided itself on its reports of the proceedings of Congress, fell days behind on the regular doings of the Senate and the House, so great was the space required to report the Houston trial. The Register was moved to deprecate a public taste so thirsty for details of this raffish proceeding.

Mr. Stanbery was the first witness. The bumps on his countenance were Exhibit A. Houston conducted the cross-examination, opening with the statement that the witness had made an accusation of fraud.

"Had you then or have you now," he asked, "any and what evidence of the correctness of such imputation?"

Several of Stanbery's friends objected to the question. Mr. Polk demanded an answer. By a vote of one hundred and one to eighty-two the House ordered Mr. Stanbery to reply.

"It was no part of my intention," he said, "to impute fraud to General Houston."

Senator Buckner told of the encounter as he had witnessed it. Mr. Stanbery characterized the Senator's testimony as "destitute of truth and infamous," but withdrew the statement and apologized. The now celebrated cane was exhibited, hefted and passed from hand to hand. The defense showed that Mr. Stanbery had carried a pistol and had tried to shoot Houston,

but the weapon was not introduced in evidence. The cane held the stage, unchallenged by any rival attraction.

On April twenty-sixth Mr. Key made the opening address for the defense. There was little in it to suggest the author of The Star Spangled Banner. He undertook to establish that Houston had not struck Stanbery for words spoken in debate but for words printed in a newspaper. The weak spot in this contention was that the words printed in the paper were a verbatim report of the debate. When he concluded, his client's chances of escaping conviction appeared to be rather slim.

This state of affairs distressed Andrew Jackson, and he sent for Houston. Speaking of it afterward, Sam Houston declared that he had never seen Jackson in such a temper. Houston was wearing the buckskin coat. The President asked if he had any other clothes. Houston said he had not, and Jackson tossed a clinking silk purse to his caller with the advice to dress like a gentleman and buck up his defense. 4 Houston went to a tailor and was measured for "a coat of the finest material, reaching to my knees, trousers in harmony of color and the latest style in cut, with a white satin vest to match." 5

On the afternoon of May sixth Houston was notified that the defense would be required to close its case on the following day. That night a number of friends dropped into his room at Brown's Hotel. "Gentlemen," Houston is quoted as saying in a reminiscence of the occasion, "we sat late and you may judge how we drank when I tell you that Stevenson [the Speaker of the House, and presiding officer of the trial] at midnight was sleeping on the lounge. Bailey Peyton was out of commission and had gone to his room and Felix Grundy had ceased to be interesting. Polk rarely indulged and left us early." 6

Houston awoke with a headache. "I took a cup of coffee but it refused to stick." A second cup behaved no better. "After something like an hour had passed I took another cup and it stuck, and I said, 'I am all right' and proceeded to array myself in my splendid apparel." 7

Above the stately entrance to the chamber of the House stood a representation of History, a comely, though alert, young woman, by the hand of an Italian sculptor. Light draperies floated about her. On one knee she balanced a ledger, and gracefully exhibited a pen in perfect readiness to record whatever of interest that should take place within her view. A wheel of the chariot in which she rode served as the face of the clock of the House.

The draped dais of the Speaker faced the clock. At the hour of noon Mr. Stevenson called the House to order. The scene before him was notable. The hall was a noble adaptation of the Greek theater pattern. Shafts of sunlight descended from a glassed dome sixty feet, at its highest point, from the floor. Beneath a sweeping arch at the Speaker's back was a figure of Liberty at whose feet a marble eagle spread its wings for flight. On either side were flag-draped panels, one hung with a portrait of Washington, one with a likeness of Lafayette.

Every seat on the floor was filled and chairs had been placed in the aisles to accommodate the privileged overflow. A solid bank of men pressed against the colonnaded semicircle of wall. For two hours there had been no room in the galleries, where the diplomatic corps, gay with ribbons, the Army, the Navy and Society were authentically represented.

In front of the Speaker's dais the prisoner bowed to his guest of the evening before.

"Mr. Speaker," he said. The tone was one of ordinary conversation, but Houston's rich warm voice reached every part of the chamber. "Mr, Speaker, arraigned for the first time of my life on a charge of violating the laws of my country I feel all that embarrassment which my peculiar situation is calculated to inspire." Houston's perfect composure made this a gracious beginning.

"I disclaim, utterly, every motive unworthy of an honor-

The tone was suddenly infused with passionate earnestness. If, when "deeply wronged," he had on "impulse" violated the laws of his country or trespassed the prerogatives of the House, he was "willing to be held to my responsibility. All I demand is that my actions may be pursued to the motives-which gave them birth."

He stood before the House, he said, branded as "a man of broken fortune and blasted reputation." "I can never forget that reputation, however limited, is the high boon of heaven. . . . Though the plowshare of ruin has been driven over me and laid waste to my brightest hopes ... I have only to say . . .

" 'I seek no sympathies, nor need;

The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree

I planted; they have torn me and I bleed.' "

It was very effective. The galleries applauded, and as Houston awaited an opportunity to resume, a bouquet of flowers dropped at his feet. A woman's voice was heard above the hum:

"I had rather be Sam Houston in a dungeon than Stanbery on a throne !" 8

Amid perfect silence Houston picked up the flowers. He bowed over them but did not raise his eyes.

Houston spoke for half an hour on the perils of legislative tyranny. He mentioned Greece and Rome. The errors of Caesar, of Cromwell, of Bonaparte and of "the Autocrat of all the Russias" were displayed. Blackstone and the Apostle Paul were shown to be on the speaker's side. A well-turned period was closed with a quotation nine lines in length, beginning:

"There is a proud, undying thought in man That bids his soul still upward look. ..."

From this premise the speaker moved dexterously to the corollary that he had committed no offense for which the Con-

gress could punish him without invading the private rights of a citizen.

Houston paused. His glance met the glance of History, then shifted to the flag that draped the portrait of Lafayette.

"So long as that proud emblem . . . shall wave in the Hall of American legislators, so long shall it cast its sacred protection over the personal rights of every American citizen. Sir, when you shall have destroyed the pride of American character, you will have destroyed the brightest jewel that heaven ever made. You will have drained the purest and holiest drop which visits the hearts of your sages in council and heroes in the field and . . . these massy columns, with yonder lofty dome will sink into one crumbling ruin. . . . But, Sir, so long as that flag shall bear aloft its glittering stars ... so long I trust, shall the rights of American citizens be preserved safe and unimpaired—till discord shall wreck the spheres—the grand march of time shall cease—and not one fragment of all creation be left to chafe the bosom of eternity's waves."

That was all. Whether Francis Scott Key, who sat in the front row, felt like disowning certain feeble lines of his own, inspired by the bombardment of Fort McHenry, is a detail upon which history is remiss. But Junius Brutus Booth plowed through the crowd and embraced his old friend.

"Houston, take my laurels !" 9

6

As soon as Speaker Stevenson could restore order, Mr. Harper, of New Hampshire, was recognized. He made a motion.

"Resolved, that Samuel Houston now in custody of the Sergeant-of-Arms, should forthwith be discharged."

Mr. Huntington, of Connecticut, was recognized. He desired to amend the motion of Mr. Harper by striking out all but the word "Resolved" and substituting the following:

"That Samuel Houston has been guilty of a contempt in violation of the privileges of this House."

The amendment was debated for four days. Mr. Polk contested every inch of the ground, but the House at length tired of the entertainment and voted one hundred and six to eighty-nine that Houston was guilty. He was sentenced to be reprimanded by the Speaker. The Stanbery wing sought to deprive Houston of the privilege of the floor of the House which he enjoyed as a former member of that body, but Polk struck back and defeated this, one hundred and one to ninety.

The reprimand took place on May fourteenth. Again the galleries were thronged and the aisles packed. Again Houston, the picture of composure, bowed before the Speaker, who bowed back, and began his unwelcome duty. He opened by alluding to the "character and the intelligence" of the accused "who has himself been honored with a seat in this House." "I forbear to say more," concluded Mr. Stevenson, "than to pronounce the judgement of the House, which is that you ... be reprimanded at this bar by the Speaker, and . . . I do reprimand you accordingly."

But Mr. Stanbery was now showing more fight than he had that evening on Pennsylvania Avenue. He had Houston arrested on a criminal warrant charging assault. Further, he obtained a House investigation of the rations contract maneuvers of 1830. A jury convicted Houston of assault and he was fined five hundred dollars, but for some reason the trial attracted next to no attention. Duff Green seems to have been saving his thunder for the ration investigation which became another national spectacle. Green was so certain that Houston would be convicted of fraud that he announced his guilt in advance.

That was an era of latitude for the press. When Duff Green broke with Jackson, the President needing an organ in Washington, had induced Francis P. Blair to start the Globe. Blair was a westerner of the Jackson-Houston stamp in the matter of personal loyalties. His big house near the Executive Mansion was a haven of refuge for an old soldier in ill health, very weary, and at times as near dejection as one of Jackson's

unconquerable spirit could be. The President would escape to "Blaar's," as he said it, in the broad North-of-Ireland way, slump into a big chair and smoke his pipe in peace. The Globe leaped to Houston's defense in the ration issue, and Andrew Jackson, busy as he was, found time to inspire Frank Blair's blunt pen.

The investigation was conducted by a committee of seven, of which Mr. Stanbery was the chairman. Houston conducted his own defense. The hearings were long drawn out. Stanbery was not impartial. There were many witnesses, some like Auguste Chouteau, from great distances. Duff Green was a tame witness. Houston practically ruined his testimony by a cross-examination conducted with Chesterfieldian courtesy. The evidence showed that Houston was the favored bidder of Eaton and Jackson, and only a failure of plans had prevented his obtaining the ration contract by secretive means and at enormous profit—perhaps aggregating a million dollars. Even so, the government would have saved money^ and motives of envy, not patriotism, had kept the contract from Houston. After six weeks the committee reported by a divided vote that "John H. Eaton and Samuel Houston do stand entirely acquitted from all imputation of fraud." 10

These triumphs were far-reaching. They stripped The Raven of his beads and blanket. They buried Big Drunk. They resurrected Sam Houston who passionately embraced as "my country" the land he had so bitterly repudiated only a few months before. Once more he was in the train of the eagle.

Houston understood what had happen'd. Reviewing the Stanbery episode in after-life he said: "I was dying out and had they taken me before a justice of peace and fined me ten dollars it would have killed me; but they gave me a national tribunal for a theatre, and that set me up again." 11

No one was more pleased to see Sam Houston set up again

than Andrew Jackson. Houston was his friend. He was another good man to use, and what President ever had enough good men? The old intimacy was restored, it was like bygone times. We have the spiteful testimony of Duff Green that Houston practically lived at the Executive Mansion.

Sam Houston was always giving presents. Poor Aunt Rachel must have had a drawerful of such remembrances. The mistress of the President's House at this period was Sarah York Jackson, wife of Andrew Jackson, Jr., the Executive's adopted son. Sam gave her Eliza Allen's* engagement ring. 12 From his discarded Indian wardrobe, he presented the President with an elaborate Cherokee ceremonial costume. Jackson had it among his trophies at the Hermitage when he died.

Like old times, indeed: Sam Houston one of the family—a renaissance of the days when this obedient servant traded horses, held offices and fought a duel for Andrew Jackson. His first thought, his constant thought, was to atone for the period of his delinquency. He would do something grand. He would capture an empire and lay it at his old Chieftain's feet—Texas, or the New Estremadura, as Houston used to say when his poetic fancy was on the wing.

The Muddier Rubicon

The thought of delivering the New Estremadura was not new with General Houston. For more than four years the refugee had been a factor in the complex Texas question, which one way or another had rippled the waters of our foreign policy since the Louisiana Purchase. One of the principal factors in keeping the question alive was Andrew Jackson, who felt a personal responsibility in the matter.

Our claim to Texas assumed this vast and vague region to be a part of Louisiana, but the authority of the assertion had been impaired by Mr. Monroe who had disavowed it to placate Spain during the rumpus following Jackson's seizure of Florida. Jackson had concurred in the repudiation, only to regret it and regard Texas as much the rightful prize of the United States as Florida. Before a year had elapsed after the renunciation, James Long, an ex-Army surgeon under Jackson, lost his life in an attempt to restore the province by means of a handful of armed adventurers.

Mexico then won its independence of Spain and inaugurated a new policy in Texas. Spain had prohibited immigration except by Spaniards. This kept Texas virtually depopulated, which Spain believed to be a protection to the northern frontier of Mexico. But that extraordinary rover, Moses Austin, by nerve and luck obtained permission to move into Texas with three hundred American families. Then Austin died

and Spain was overthrown in Mexico. Stephen F. Austin took over his father's work. The Mexican Republic validated the grant and invited other settlers on attractive terms. A tide of immigration followed and by 1832 the white population of Texas had grown to twenty thousand, frontier Americans predominating. Austin had become a loyal citizen of his adopted country. This was not true of many others, however, who carried to Texas the definite idea of bringing it under United States sovereignty.

The significance of this trend was not lost on Washington. Mr. Adams asked Andrew Jackson to be the first minister of the United States to the Mexican Republic. He declined, and Joel R. Poinsett went to Mexico City, shortly to receive instructions to ask Mexico to accept the Rio Grande as the frontier. The startled Mexicans refused. Poinsett was asked to restate the offer with a cash inducement of a million dollars, but, feeling that this would only further antagonize Mexico, he declined to do so. On the other hand, he concluded a treaty in which the Sabine River was declared to be the boundary. Jackson saw Texas slipping from our grasp, and his irritation increased.

Becoming president, Jackson shelved the Poinsett agreement, which the Senate had not ratified, and reopened negotiations for the Rio Grande boundary. He was willing to pay five million dollars. Poinsett was replaced by a personal friend of Jackson, Anthony Butler. Butler tried to bribe the Mexican officials whose sanction was necessary to the relinquishment of Texas. His methods, lacking finesse, only served to throw Mexico into a state of alarm. The colonization laws were amended and eventually revoked to choke off emigration to Texas. Outcry against the acquisition of Texas also went up from free-soil New England which feared an increase of power to the slaveholding South, and Europe took notice: all very annoying to Andrew Jackson.

Into this darkening picture had plunged Sam Houston, trained in the Jackson school: Texas was ours—we were fopf

tiny-bound to bring it under the flag. When the spectacular ruin of his fortunes sent the ex-Governor storming southwest-ward, Texas, and not the Indian country or the Rocky Mountains, was the goal Sam Houston had in his mind. It was Jackson who changed these plans.

Houston had scarcely arrived in the Cherokee country when the President received word of his intentions. This came from Duff Green, moved by a sincere wish to discredit Houston. Green showed Jackson a letter from Congressman Marable, quoting Houston as saying that he intended to "conquer Mexico or Texas, and be worth two millions in two years." This came at a moment when Jackson was anxious to preserve an appearance of respect for Mexican sovereignty. The President believed the story that Houston had told Marable to be "efusions of a distempered brain," but he took no chances. "As a precautionary measure I directed the Secretary of War fco write and enclose Mr. Pope, Govr of Arkansas, the extract [of Marable's letter to Green] and instruct him if such illegal project should be discovered to exist to adopt prompt measures to put it down and give the government the earliest intelligence of such illegal enterprise with the names of all concerned therein." 1

Sam Houston entered the Indian country under surveillance, and his mail was intercepted and read. But Jackson was frank enough to write him a long letter. "When I parted with you on the 18th of January last ... I then viewed you as on the brink of happiness and rejoiced. About to be united in marriage to a beautiful young lady, of accomplished manners, and respectable connections, & of your own selection—you the Governor of the State and holding the affections of the people—these were your prospects when I shook you by the hand and bade you farewell. You may well judge my astonishment and grief in receiving a letter from you dated Little Rock, A. T.

conveying the sad intellegence that you were then ... an exile from, your country."

These lines were well calculated to soothe the torn heart of the fugitive, who surmised the sort of stories his enemies had carried to Jackson. Houston read on. "It has been communicated to me that you had the illegal enterprise in view of conquering Texas; that you had declared that you would, in less than two years, be emperor of that country by conquest. I must really have thought you deranged to have believed you had so wild a scheme in contemplation, and particularly when it was communicated that the physical force to be employed was the Cherokee Indians. Indeed, my dear Sir, I cannot believe you have any such chimerical visionary .scheme in view. Your pledge of honor to the contrary is a sufficient guarantee that you will never engage in any enterprise injurious to you* country that would tarnish your fame." 2

The pledge was given, and* honor was not a word that Sam Houston used lightly. 3 Consequently, letters like this, from John Wharton, of Nashville, could receive no satisfactory answer: "I have heard you intended an expedition against Texas. I suppose, if it is true, you will let your Nashville friends know of it." 4 Houston's silence seems to have puzzled Wharton, who went to Texas on his own account, writing again in October: "I . . . request you once more to visit Texas. It is a fine field for enterprise. You can get a grant of land, be surrounded by your friends, and what may not the coming of time bring about?" 5

Sam Houston was as anxious as any one to know what time might bring about, but for the present he could only plan vaguely in the hope that time would induce Jackson to release him from his vow. Jackson appreciated Houston's disappointment and tried to divert his friend with the suggestion that he enter public life in Arkansas under the Jacksonian aegis. This Houston declined, but he considered, for a time, settling in Natchez, Mississippi, another good jumping-off place. Meantime, however, the web of Indian affairs caught

him up and began to lead him along strange paths. But Texas* was never long out of his thoughts.

3

When Houston's first visit to Washington from the Indian country precipitated the rations controversy, the Cherokee envoy unburdened himself concerning another matter to Dr. Robert Mayo, a Jackson admirer and fellow-lodger at Brown's Hotel. Some months later, while the Administration was wrestling with the whisky issue by which Sam Houston had raised the question of Cherokee sovereignty, Doctor Mayo unburdened himself to Jackson. The President requested Mayo to put his story in writing, which he did in a letter dated December 2, 1830.

"Sometime in the month of February last . . . very ihortly after General Samuel Houston arrived in this city, I was introduced to him at Brown's Hotel. Our rooms were on the same floor and convenient for social intercourse; which, from the General's courteous manners, and my own desire to ... do him justice in my own estimation relative to his abandoning his family and abdicating the government of Tennessee, readily became intimate. . . . He discanted on the immense fields for enterprise in the Indian settlement, in Texas; and recommended me to direct my destinies that way. . . . I had a curiosity now on tiptoe, to hear his romantic projections, for his manner and his enthusiasm were at least entertaining. ... I learnt these facts and speculations, viz:

"That he was organizing an expedition against Texas; to afford a cloak to which he had assumed the Indian costume, habits and associations, by settling among them in the neighborhood of Texas. That nothing was more easy to accomplish than the conquest and possession of that extensive and fertile country, [and] by the cooperation of the Indians in the Arkansas Territory and recruits among the citizens of the United States . . . [form] a separate and independent government. . . . That the event of success opened the most unbounded prospects of wealth and that ... I should have a surgeoncy in the expedition, and he recommended me in the

meantime, to remove along with him and practice physic among the Indians. . . .

"I declined . . . and . . . after this our interviews fell into neglect. ... In the month of March [1830] Gen'l Houston visited Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, and did intend to have gone as far as Boston. . . .

"Sometime in the month of June ... I met a young gentleman ... by the name of Murray, from Tennessee .. . [who] readily confirmed . . . as a thing of common rumor . . . that the general was organizing an expedition to take possession of Texas. . . .

"A few weeks ago a Mr. Hunter, lately dismissed from West Point, came to take lodgings in the house where I boarded. . . . Being in pecuniary embarrassments and unable to redeem his baggage ... he fell to boasting of the funds he was daily expecting by the mail. . . . But, says he, all tnat is nothing to the unbounded prospects I have of wealth in the future. Indeed! I said, how is it that you can engender wealth? . . . Ah, says he, that is a secret. I will lay my life, said I, that it is a scheme upon Texas. He, hesitatingly, said, yes, something like it. And said I, General Houston is the projector and conductor of the enterprise? At this he was . . . impressed with the conviction that I knew all . . . and . . . set in to . . . writing my name on the table in cipher . . . and wrote the scheme [of the cipher] here enclosed."

Mr. Hunter further claimed to be "a bona fide agent of the recruiting service for this district; and that there were agencies established in all the principal towns, and various parts of the United States; and that occult code exhibited was the means of correspondence. That several thousand had already enlisted along the seaboard from New England to Georgia, inclusive. That each man had paid thirty dollars to the common fund, and took an oath of secrecy. . . . That they were to repair ... as travellers to different points on the banks of the Mississippi, where they had already chartered steamboats." 6

The credibility of Doctor Mayo has been assailed on the ground that he was a tale-bearing busybody, hostile to Jackson.

These criticisms are somewhat true, but the hostility came later, and has no bearing on his letter. Mayo may have been gullible and he may have stretched things a bit, but circumstances impel the conclusion that he reported with fair accuracy what he had heard. He expected a sweeping official investigation of his story, and was chagrined because Jackson did not order one. Barring the cipher, the essential details of the plotting as pictured by Doctor Mayo are supported by other evidence, as well as by the facts of the Texas drama, as they presently were to unfold themselves. Jackson himself, knowing all that he did of the Texas question, was sufficiently impressed to pass the Mayo story on to the authorities in Arkansas with instructions to maintain with "utmost secrecy" a fresh lookout over Houston's movements.

The discreet Houston did nothing to bring about an intervention of the spying officials. Rumors of his Texas conspiracy did not die, however. They were much alive in the Indian country, in the United States and in Texas as well, where it was understood that the exile was in communication with a young lawyer named William Barret Travis, who had brought with him from Georgia some forward ideas touching the future of northeastern Mexico.

Jackson pressed his purchase negotiations as hard as he dared, and Houston kept his word not to disturb the deep waters of diplomacy. So far so good, except that Butler's efforts at purchase exhibited slight prospects of success and presently Sam Houston was off on another tangent. His seemingly sudden notions of the sanctity of Cherokee sovereignty gave the Administration an amount of concern. In this instance also, Sam Houston took his medicine like a good Jackson subaltern, and there followed a period of comparative quiet on the Potomac, while on the Arkansas Houston was too greatly disconcerted by "the flowing bowl" for the critical ap-

plication necessary to the execution of any settled plan. Shocked out of this hiatus by the death of his mother, Sam Houston burst upon Washington and lost no time proving that his genius for the spotlight retained its fine edge. The pummeling of Stanbery reestablished Sam Houston as a national figure and a trusted friend of the President. It was the springboard for his long-postponed leap to Texas.

The purchase negotiations still dragged, and many people 3 including Jackson, were becoming impatient. Texas was filling up with Americans who made little secret of their revolutionary intentions. This situation, coupled with the effronteries of Butler, increased the suspicions of Mexico, which fumblingly began to take measures.

But the laws forbidding American emigration could not be enforced. A law abolishing slavery met a similar fate. The Americans in Texas became bolder, and when Stephen F. Austin, their leader, showed himself too conservative, a headstrong minority began to take matters in its own hands. While the Stanbery affair was at its height the radicals discussed the possibility of inviting either Sam Houston or Billy Carroll, of Tennessee, to lead them. 7

Jackson was getting in a corner, and he, too, took measures. Butler was prodded. Steps also were taken against the possible collapse of the policy of purchase. Houston spent his days and nights with Jackson men who thought it time for a Florida coup in Texas. He pressed his advantage. The President yielded, and with either the expressed or implied consent of his patron, Sam Houston made an excursion to New York to raise funds for a trip to Texas. The New Yorkers were sympathetic, but not so quick to part with their money. Eastern financiers had recently made heavy investments in Texas lands and a revolution was something that required reflection. Samuel Swartwout, now President Jackson's collector of the Port of New York, would cheerfully acknowledge that. So would old Aaron Burr.

Houston returned to Washington with the question of his

personal budget unsolved. Whereupon, according to Buell, a biographer jealous of Jackson's reputation, the President loaned Houston five hundred dollars to start on his adventure 8 —a modest sum but Jackson's cash reserve was low. The President also clothed Houston with official powers and concocted a confidential mission to Texas under a United States passport. Houston quietly left Washington, giving out that he was bound for his wigwam on the Arkansas. As usual he stopped over in Tennessee.

The talk in Tennessee still revolved about Eliza Allen. Neither the Stanbery affair nor Texas had diminished interest in the parting of the lovers. But in three years sentiment had undergone a change. Houston's policy of silence had begun to tell. Whether blameless or blameworthy, who could criticize his conduct since the event? He had said nothing; he had done nothing except to withdraw. By the outward sign no detachment could be more complete, no oblivion more sincereli sought. Fragmentary glimpses of a fugitive figure, to-day in the vortex of great events in the nation's capital, to-morrow on a dim frontier ruling the camps of reckless men: such was the likeness that Tennessee had contrived of Sam Houston. It appealed. The exile had endowed his cause with a certain dignity and his person with a modish flavor of romance.

The Stanbery affair was "good theater," and although Carroll was still in the saddle, Houston's return caused something resembling an ovation in Tennessee. "Wherever he went he was received with every demonstration of regard. . . . Reason had resumed its sway over the public mind, and a strong desire was manifested that he should again take up his abode in Tennessee." But in his own words, Houston "could not be dissuaded from his purpose of returning once more to the forest. A sight of the spot where he had seen the bright hopes that had greeted his early manhood, crushed in a single hour,

only awakened associations he wished to forget." Accordingly "he once more turned his face towards the distant wigwam of the old Indian chief" to seek "repose by the hearth-stone of a savage King—a biting satire on civilized life." 9

Although these protestations served to disguise the traveler's descent upon Texas, there can be no doubt of the sincerity of the allusion to Eliza. Yet, as Houston wrote Lewis, had she eluded surveillance and come to him on the occasion of the memorable visit to Nashville two years before "I would not [have] received her." 10 The tragedy that kept those two apart formed the very soul of Sam Houston's secret. "Tho' the world can never know my situation and may condemn me God will

me

f55ll

justify

But God's justification had been slow in easing the torments of Houston's mind. During the three and one-half years of his Indian life, Houston visited Tennessee four times. On two occasions he saw his wife—if there is truth in stories that have been told and believed in Sumner County for nearly one hundred years. They rest upon ground a reviewer must tread with caution, but the body of legend that surrounds Sam Houston is a part of the saga of his life. The versions presented here seem the most agreeable with history.

This is the story of a girlhood friend of Eliza who was a bridesmaid at her wedding. "One day while Eliza was in the garden of the manor house . . . the housemaid announced that a stranger, a tall man, was in the reception room asking to see her. On entering the room she saw at a glance that the stranger was the late Governor artfully disguised. He arose and made his old time courtly salutation. . . . He did not suspect that his disguise was detected. . . . He conversed about the weather and the condition of the river. Neither did she in any way hint that she knew him but all the time the visitor was gazing at her as if to fasten her features more surely in his memory. Then he arose, made another profound bow and passed out going down to the river. There he entered a canoe, paddled to the opposite bank and disappeared." 12

The other account I select is accredited to one Dilsey, a servant of the Allen family. The incident is supposed to have taken place on Houston's last visit to Tennessee before his departure for Texas. Dilsey was busy about her cabin near the "big house" when Marse Sam suddenly appeared, frightening the negress almost out of her wits. Winning her confidence with a present of silver, Houston persuaded Dilsey to call her mistress to the cabin. He concealed himself and thus harbored by a slave, is said to have gazed upon the face and heard the voice of his wife for the last time. 13

6

The wisdom of Houston's impulse not to linger in the environs of Tennessee soon became apparent. Leaving Nashville, he stopped at Cincinnati. He had friends there who were interested in his Texas plans, and in any event the presence of one so notable was something to speak of on the wharf where the well-to-do promenaded and took their nip at the Orleans Coffee House that stood in a garden facing the steamboat landing. The theater bills announced that General Houston would attend the play on the evening of July twentieth.

The guest of honor with a party of friends arrived and entered a box. Their appearance was saluted with hisses.

"Turn him out!" "The damned scoundrel!" "Female purity!"

The play was forgotten. The curtain descended and the theater manager came out to see what was the matter. They howled him down. One or two of Houston's friends rose and attempted to speak. They howled them down. Sam Houston rose. His towering form, his confident self-command and unforgettable voice restored quiet to the theater.

"He appealed as a stranger," said a newspaper account, 14 "to the hospitality and patriotism of the audience." He recalled "having fought and bled in defense of his country, when his companions in arms were soldiers from Ohio."

"Don't hear him!" "Out with him!" "Female purity!"

The actors tried to sing the people into a good humor, but it was useless. The performance closed. "Houston and his friends succeeding in leaving the theatre without injury!"

About six weeks later, that is, in early September, 1832, Sam Houston received at Cantonment Gibson his passport requesting "all the Tribes of Indians, whether in amity with the United States, or as yet not allied to them by Treaties, to permit safely and freely to pass through their respective territories, General Samuel Houston, a Citizen of the United States, Thirty-eight years of age, Six feet, two inches in stature, brown hair and light complexion; and in case of need to give him all lawful aid and protection." 15

The name of Texas does not appear in the document. But by the same post, or very nearly the same, came a letter from Houston's old friend, John Van Fossen, who could speak with less reserve. Van Fossen was a Jackson political appointee and had been close to Houston during the Stanbery episode. He regretted to hear "that your friends in New York may fail to furnish the means of prosecuting your Texas enterprise." "I hope," he continued, "it will not prove true, for I had indulged the expectation of . . . the most splendid results. I do not believe that that country will long continue its allegiance to the Mexican Government, and I would much rather see it detached through your agency . . . than . . . [by] purchase. ... It has been your fortune to engross more public attention than any other private individual in this nation, and I am daily asked a hundred questions about this extraordinary man, Gen. Houston. I most ardently hope that I may ere long be able to say that you have triumphed over every obstacle that interposed against . . . your zvishes." 16

Houston passed the next three months settling his affairs. He was at Cantonment Gibson often. Things were quiet, and old Colonel Arbuckle was courting the lately widowed Sallie Nicks, who still served out grog although she was worth twenty-five thousand dollars. In November Washington Irving arrived at the post on his tour of the wild West, and Houston joined

the distinguished visitor's escort on its way to the hunting-grounds. "Got. Houston," scribbled Mr. Irving in his pocket note-book, "tall, large, well formed, fascinating man—low crowned large brimmed white beaver—boots with brass [?] eagle [ ?] spurs—given to grandiloquence. A large & military

mode of expressing himself; I encamped last night at , for,

I slept last night. Old Genl Nix [Sallie's late lamented] used to say God made him two drinks scant." 1T

Not long thereafter The Raven said farewell to Tiana and left her possessed of the Wigwam Neosho, its fields and two slaves. Andrew Jackson's emissary took with him only Jack, the pony he rode; and Jack had no tail. Heading toward the Red River, Houston met Elias Rector, whom General Albert Pike has immortalized as the Fine Arkansas Gentleman who got drunk once a week on whisky and sobered himself on wine. The two rode together for a day and halted for a convivial hour before parting. Houston said it was humiliating to think of appearing so poorly mounted among a race of strangers who were connoisseurs of horse-flesh. It would be trying on the horse as well, for Jack, having no tail, would find the flies a pest in Texas. Saddles and bridles were changed, and Houston took leave of Jack with words that touched Rector.

"Houston," he said, "I wish to give you something before we separate and I have nothing that will do as a gift except my razor."

"Rector," said Houston, "I except your gift, and mark my words, if I have luck this razor will some day shave the chin of a president of a republic." 18

On the first day of December, 1832, Houston was at Fort Towson on the American bank of the Red River, a sprawling, unfinished stream, normally more river-bed than river. On the other side billowed a vacant plain dressed in dirty red grass spotted with patches of jack-oak. This was Texas. On December second, while an eagle circled overhead, Sam Houston mounted the horse of the Fine Arkansas Gentleman and splashed into the muddier Rubicon.

BOOK THREE

Destiny

"Your name & fame will be enrolled amongst the greatest chieftains."

— Andrew Jackson.

CHAPTER XV Don Samuel

Through the rain and the red mud of el Camino Real sloshed a dripping horse and a dripping rider. The weight of silver trappings jingling on his martingale and the radiant poncho to shield his fringed buckskins from the slanting down* pour marked the unknown sefior who fared the King's High Way as a personage of degree. Traveling eastward with Nacogdoches at his back, he had ridden more than a thousand miles in Texas, fording wild rivers, threading forests and crossing the featureless plain from San Antonio de Bexar. The gleaming stone and adobe town, drowsing through its second century of sunlight, had blessed the stranger with good weather and good company. The white contours of the outlying Alamo Mission, the plazas with their soft rugs of gray dust, shaded patios where guitars measured rich cadences and senoritas in flashing garments played with their fans: this seemed like a page from one of those idle novels the wayfarer had professed to deplore.

But it was reality, and the stranger had felt his weariness steal away under the influence of the poetry of Spanish names and the beautiful indolence of Spanish manners. A chance acquaintance met on the route had proved capable of marvelous introductions. The newcomer was entertained at the residence of Don Juan Veramendi, the vice-governor, who presented his guest as Don Samuel Houston.

With many expressions of regret, a few Spanish touches added to his costume and a few Spanish phrases to his vocabulary, Don Samuel had departed from Bexar. The breadth of Texas behind him, he crossed the turbulent Sabine and stood again on United States soil. At an inn in Natchitoches, Louisiana, he indited a letter under date of February 13, 1833:

"Gen. Jackson:

"Dear Sir:—Having been so far as Bexar, in the province of Texas ... I am in possession of some information that . . . may be calculated to forward your views, if you should entertain any, touching the acquisition of Texas by the United States.

"That such a measure is desired by nineteen-twentieths of the population of the province, I can not doubt. . . . Mexico is involved in civil war. . . . The people of Texas are determined to form a State Government, and to separate from Coa-huila, and unless Mexico is soon restored to order . . . Texas will remain separate from the Confederacy of Mexico. She has already beaten and repelled all the troops of Mexico from her soil. . . . She can defend herself against the whole power of Mexico, for really Mexico is powerless and penniless. . . . Her want of money taken in connection with the course which Texas must and will adopt, will render a transfer of Texas to some power inevitable. . . .

"Now is a very important crisis for Texas. . . . England is pressing her suit for it, but its citizens will resist if any transfer should be made of them to any power but the United States. . . . My opinion is that Texas, by her members in Convention, will, by 1st of April, declare all that country" [north of the Rio Grande] as Texas proper, and form a State Constitution. I expect to be present at that Convention, and will apprise you of the course adopted. ... I may make Texas my abiding place . . . [but] / will never forget the country of my birth. I will notify from this point the Commissioners of the Indians at Fort Gibson of my success, which will reach you through the War Department. . . . "Your friend and obedient servant, "Sam Houston." 1

Calculated as this casual-looking letter was to influence the

course of the President of the United States, the accuracy of General Houston's survey forms a subject of interest. To whom had he applied for his information? What had been his observations ?

2

From Fort Towson on the Red River General Jackson's envoy had ridden south to Nacogdoches, a distance of one hundred and eighty miles, with only two cabins on the way. As mission settlement, military post and border town, Nacogdoches had behind it an intermittent history of one hundred and fifteen years. Here the traveler took a short rest and pushed south-westward one hundred and eighty miles farther to San Felipe de Austin, on the Brazos River, a settlement of about thirty thrifty families, with two little taverns where guests, if numerous, slept on the floor. San Felipe de Austin was not designed as a resort for tourists. It was the capital of the famous colony where by virtue of attention to work, inattention to politics and the genius of Stephen F. Austin, several thousand emigrant Americans were attaining a sound prosperity. Already Austin and his work were widely known in the United States. Sam Houston went to San Felipe to consult this interesting man.

The empresario was absent in the interior of his vast domain. But in San Felipe Houston renewed the acquaintance of a Texan of scarcely less salient renown. Jim Bowie 2 was a sandy-haired giant from Georgia with an engaging smile and an adaptable way that made him equally eligible to the society of the old grandee families and the overnight camps of the frontier. He had stormed into Texas with the filibuster, Long, and ranged in and out of the place ever since, involving his name with legends of duels, Indian fights, slave smuggling, land speculations, and exploits with the celebrated knife that bears his name. He had married Ursula Veramendi, a daughter of the vice-governor, joined church and accumulated enough wealth to instal his family in a fine house in Saltillo.

In Jim Bowie Houston found a personality flavored to his liking. The two ate Christmas dinner together at San Felipe and rode to San Antonio de Bexar where Don Samuel unfolded his official papers and gave everything an appearance of regularity by conducting pow-wows with the Indians.

Houston never explained the nature of these interviews, except to say that their object was "confidential" between Jackson and himself, and that the ends "contemplated" were "accomplished." 3 The Secretary of War, however, to whom Houston submitted the results of his Indian conferences, found the report worthless and declined to pay an expense account of thirty-five hundred dollars which Houston enclosed.* I think this may support Houston's assertion that the objects of the Indian mission, which wears the aspect of a subterfuge, were confidential between the President and himself. Had the Secretary of War been a party to the secret he would have passed the expense account.

Before writing Jackson from Natchitoches Houston had found Austin and talked with him at length. Yet the story Jackson received was not derived from anything Stephen F. Austin had said. Nor is* it likely to have come from Bowie who, despite his personal acquaintance with many of the advanced thinkers politically, was a Mexican citizen, connected by the strongest ties to the existing regime.

It is not difficult, however, to surmise the source of the partizan story that Houston passed on to Jackson. It might have come, lock and stock, from the astute and energetic Wharton brothers, William and John, who long had had their eyes on Houston as a handy man for the Texas radicals. It might have come from Henry Smith of Brazoria, who hated everything Spanish and believed in the divine right of Nordics, or from Sterling C. Robertson, a colony promoter from Tennessee, now engaged in a quarrel with Austin.

Houston had seen these men and others of their stamp. Their views had impressed him; Austin's had not. This was natural. Houston had known the Whartons in the old davs

DON SAMUEL V»3

in Tennessee. He had known Robertson there, and eleven years before had invested money in the bankrupt enterprise about which Robertson was disputing with Austin. From the councils of these gentlemen Houston had emerged to agitate Jackson with the sensational news of Texas twenty to one for annexation, and in virtual rebellion, having driven all Mexican troops from her soil.

3

An imposing dress, this, for the actual events.

In 1830 Mexican concern over American zeal to buy Texas, coupled with the imprudent declamations of Americans on both sides of the Sabine, had found expression in a law calculated to halt American colonization and encourage settlement bj native Mexicans and Europeans. Henceforth Americans could enter Texas only under passports issued by Mexican authorities. This played havoc with the colonial empresarios, including Austin. But Austin had given such unfailing proof of his fidelity that he was able to obtain an exception in favor of his colony. The new statute also required the regarrisoning of the Texas military posts, long vacant, but the real grievances centered upon immigration and the collection of customs.

It remained for a swashbuckling Kentucky soldier of fortune named Bradburn, a colonel in the Mexican service, to make trouble between the troops and the inhabitants. He arrested William B. Travis and others on trivial charges, and one hundred and sixty armed colonists marched to their rescue. The prisoners were released, but this did not avert a brisk battle at Velasco where a small Mexican force surrendered and marched out of Texas on parole.

The prevailing sentiment was that Travis's friends had gone too far and the apprehensive colonists hit upon Antonio L6pez de Santa Anna as the instrument to rescue them from a warm predicament.

General Santa Anna was leading a Liberal revolt against

the president, Bustamante. The colonists adopted resolutions representing their disturbances as an extension of the Liberal battle-line against the hirelings of this convenient tyrant. The diplomacy succeeded and Texas began to speak well of General Santa Anna, who was a man born to lead soldiers. He needed^ troops now, and one by one the garrisons in Texas packed their knapsacks and marched across the Rio Grande. Within a few weeks all were gone except the garrison at remote Nacogdoches, whose commander, opposed to Santa Anna, elected to remain. Nacogdoches made an armed demonstration, however, and after some casualties sent commander and command on their dusty way to the Rio Grande.

Mexico was now thoroughly immersed in civil war. In October of 1832 Texas held a convention in San Felipe which precipitated the first important show of strength between the party favoring American acquisition and those opposed. William H. Wharton led the acquisition party, but Austin, in his quiet way, decisively defeated Wharton for presiding officer. The Convention asked for a dissolution of the union with Coa-huila and a separate state government for Texas, with free immigration and minor reforms. It denied any desire for independence.

A few weeks later Sam Houston arrived in Texas. The next news from Mexico City was that Bustamante had been driven from the presidency. Then Texas heard of the "election" of Santa Anna, who would take office April first. Texas decided to restate its case to the victorious Liberal leader and a call went out for the second Convention to which Houston had alluded in his letter to Jackson. Impulsive Nacogdoches pressed Houston to be a delegate and he became a candidate of the Wharton wing. This was the situation when Houston wrote to Jackson.

4

Don Samuel returned to Nacogdoches to find that he had been unanimously elected a delegate to the Convention. Where-

upon, Houston says he "took up his residence among his new constituents, who had extended him so generous a greeting." 5

He did not remain with them long, however, because the Convention was called to order at San Felipe on April 1, 1833—the day that Santa Anna was sworn in at Mexico City. This time William H. Wharton defeated Austin for presiding officer, but Austin's moderating hand showed itself upon the work of the assembly which was practically a copy of that of 1832. Among the innovations, however, was a resolution of Houston's against encroachments on Indian lands and a constitution for the proposed State of Texas upon its separation from Coahuila, which the Convention again solicited in respectful terms. Houston pronounced the new constitution "one of the best extant." He is entitled to an opinion because he wrote most of it.

Austin was chosen to lay the Convention's requests before Santa Anna, and a week after the meeting dissolved he began the long journey to Mexico City. He expected to return in a few months, but Texas did not see Stephen F. Austin again for more than two years. Meanwhile, there was opportunity for Don Samuel to cultivate the acquaintance of his cordial constituents.

CHAPTER XVI Halls of the Montezumas

The alcalde of La Villa de Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Nacogdoches was Don Adolfo Sterne, accomplished, among other things, as a linguist, speaking perfect German, good English, passable French and Spanish well enough for the time he had been at it. On his arrival in the Village of Our Lady of the Pillar of Nacogdoches, Sam Houston must have been delighted to find so influential a magistracy graced by Adolfo Sterne—otherwise Adolphus Sterne, a rosy little Rhineland Jew of many wanderings whom Houston had known as a transient member of the Monongahela toddy set at the Nashville Inn.

Senor Sterne's constituency, now Senor Houston's as well, lay on the King's High Way. This wretched path spanned the face of Texas from west to east. Forty-seven miles before drowning its sorrows in the Sabine, it dipped from the red plain to cross a pair of creeks. On the pretty little knoll between the streams was a Spanish mission about which had crept the inevitable Spanish town to pass three generations in somewhat troubled sleep, to die in its sleep, and in the fulness of time to be resuscitated by Yankee enterprise.

To and fro across the Sabine restless Yanks had swept with schemes in their heads and guns in their hands—fleeing justice, fleecing Indians, gambling in land and promoting shooting scrapes called revolutions. By these means Nacogdoches

HALLS OF THE MONTEZUMAS 197

and a good share of the Redlands, as East Texas was called, repopulated themselves with the driftwood of various adventures. There was at least one resident who had come southwest with Aaron Burr. Others had arrived before that with Nolan and with Magee, and afterward with Long and with Hayden Edwards, whom Austin had headed off by riding up from San Felipe with his personal militia. There were men who had consorted with the pirate Lafitte, the founder of Galveston and Spain's sleepless enemy. But Captain Lafitte, being a mariner careful of his personal dignity, had declined to concern himself with any of these amateur theatricals.

The law of 1830 closing the door on immigration, gave Nacogdoches a new importance as a smuggling center. This law slightly reduced the number of American immigrants, but materially changed their character. People who had anything to lose stayed at home. The Redlands and the unauthorized settlements about Galveston Bay entitled Texas to the picturesque fame acquired in those early days. "Hell and Texas!" took its place in the vocabulary of the 'thirties as a mild cuss word; a loose expression or Texas would have been mentioned first. When a citizen disappeared from his home community under cloudy circumstances he was said to have G. T. T.—Gone To Texas. Old Texas lawyers still tell of the newcomer who was so disturbed in mind over the circumstances of his coming that he went to an attorney for advice. "My friend," the lawyer said, "this is very serious. My counsel is that you leave this place before sundown." "Leave! Where'll I go? Ain't I in Texas now?"

The great principality of Stephen F. Austin was an exception to this rule. His colonists were selected for their industry and integrity, and his own labors seem incredible. He dealt with a central government at Mexico City and a state government at Saltillo, alike capricious, inexpert, often corrupt and always kaleidoscopic. He dealt with colonists whom hardships had disheartened and rendered distrustful. He was their military and civilian chief, their banker, broker, merchant and

messenger. He led them against the Indians. He surveyed their lands, established jurisdictions, organized and administered a state. In this work Austin submerged the best years of his life—a starved anchorite who had pawned his watch, reduced his wardrobe to homespun and worn himself down in body and in mind.

He was not a man suited by temperament to a frontier life. His gentle instincts and quiet tastes, his love of order and of the amenities of cultured society, should have found a more congenial atmosphere. He appreciated music and poetry. He liked to dress well, to dance and to dine in the company of cultivated men and women. His rare and business-burdened visits to the cities were little white islands of bliss. All these things had Stephen Austin foregone from a sense of duty. Duty, always duty. Duty had drawn him to Texas by the side of that tempestuous visionary, his father. The old man died while still he dreamed, but he exacted from his dutiful son a promise to follow the rainbow—a pursuit that the elder Austin, if one may judge by his past, would have thrown up long ago.

But at length Texas began to prosper and Austin felt that a time might come when he should not be too harassed to marry. He picked a site on a hill, far up the Colorado, where one day he might retire and occupy himself with the creation of a great university to embellish the civilization that he had wrought in a wilderness. Stephen was dreaming as his father had dreamed when a merciful death intervened before the awakening. A new cloud necked the sky of Texas.

At first this annexation talk did not disturb Stephen Austin. He was a Mexican citizen and an officer of the Republic. He had held up his hand and sworn fidelity to Mexico. Austin opposed annexation—tactfully, noiselessly, and kept his colonists with him. The Whartons put themselves at the head of the disturbing movement. They were competent. Texas began to fill up with men of a type inclined to listen to them. Austin looked upon Nacogdoches as an abode of insurgents and upon

HALLS OF THE MONTEZUMAS 199

Sam Houston as a dubious adventurer. This hurt Houston's pride.

At the close of the Convention of 1833 Austin had set out for Mexico City resolved to return as quickly as possible. The two-year delay was no fault of his.

Sam Houston took up his residence in Nacogdoches in time to be counted in the census of 1833, to which Alcalde Sterne was able to sign his name in certification of the luminous fact that the town had 1,272 inhabitants, as follows: bachelors, 319, spinsters, 291, married couples, 122, widowers, 9, widows, 34, minors under sixteen years of age, 375, of whom 183 were boys and 192 were girls. In which category Houston placed himself is not known, although a little later one encounters him officially herded with the bachelors and exceedingly attentive to Miss Anna Raguet.

Miss Anna was seventeen years old, a daughter of Colonel Henry Raguet, a Pennsylvanian of Swiss descent—merchant, landowner and substantial citizen—the sort of man Austin would have welcomed to San Felipe. He lived in the best house in town. He entertained generously, but as Anna was the apple of her father's eye, it was not every one he brought home to hear her play the French harp in the parlor. Miss Anna was a graceful translator of Spanish, and when this got out the provincial correspondence of some of the bachelors increased enormously.

Sam Houston became a permanent guest of Adolfo Sterne and won the affection of every member of the family. This assured his position socially as well as politically. In every way the hospitable Sterne home with its French-speaking Louisiana negro servants was more desirable than Brown's Tavern on the Plaza, where many another less fortunate bachelor made the best of it. The other hotel was the Cantina del Monte, Miguel Cortenoz, proprietor. Guests of the Monte

were better off when they could arrange their affairs so as to Bleep in the daytime, since Senor Cortenoz conducted a dance-hall and gambling room in conjunction with his hotel. Dances were also occasionally held at Brown's by one or another of the various Anglo-Saxon social sets, but there was entertainment at the Monte every night and a fandango once a week. These fandangos were supposed to be pretty tough affairs, despite the attendance of Americans attracted, as a fellow countryman assures us, by "the novelty of the scene."

Music at the Monte was furnished by an ancient Castillian in soiled linen who divided his attention between a violin and a long cigar. The principal entertainers were a Mexican dancing team. The girl was vivacious, with a mouth "pretty enough to kiss" from which drooped a cigarette in a fashion described as "very becoming." Her partner, a pasty-faced professional dancing man, seemed unworthy of association with such fresh beauty. Adjoining the ballroom was an airless chamber with smoke-blackened walls where a beak-nosed crone sat behind a tall table with a pot of black coffee at her side. She sipped the coffee and sold stiffer drinks to the perspiring dancers, sliding the glasses across a table-top that was slick from constant use.

Senor Cortenoz also had a daughter. Her name has not come down in history, but she, also, was the apple of her father's eye. In January of 1836 this child died of measles. Death has a great prestige with the Spanish. Life may be arbitrary, forcing an inconspicuous role upon one deserving of better things, but death makes one the central figure of a ceremonial as elaborate as the estate of the deceased can provide. Miguel Cortenoz closed his gambling room and gave his dance-hall people a night off. The body of his little girl was borne to the Monte and laid out on a table in the center of the ballroom floor with candles at her head and at her feet. Unfortunately the padre was absent from the parish, but the entire Spanish-speaking population of Nacogdoches left their mud and adobe domiciles, and were joined by a sprinkling of

HALLS OF THE MONTEZUMAS 201

Americans. All night they mourned with Miguel Cortenoz and glasses slid on the smooth table in the dark back room. In the morning the procession threaded the narrow streets to the enclosed square of consecrated earth and saw la chiquita laid to rest.

Sam Houston was not present at these solemn rites, being in another part of Texas at the time. Nor is there direct evidence that he was ever a steady patron of the house of Cortenoz. The English-speaking and Spanish-speaking sets, who called themselves respectfully Americans and Mexicans, did not mix. The latter contained a small number of polished people. The American set was subdivided into classes, ranging from the select Sterne-Raguet milieu to the more numerous following of an ex-Missourian known as the Ring Tailed Panther, reputed to have eaten raw the heart of an Indian. Houston was of the Sterne-Raguets, but he was also popular among the Mexicans. Probably no other American in the town could have adopted the radiant Mexican blanket as a part of his costume without giving offense to the Spanish element or losing cast with the Nordic gentility.

The Mexicans were outnumbered by five to one, but stood as a man opposed to the separation of Texas from the mother country. Houston had reported to Jackson that the Americans were twenty to one in favor of separation. This may have been true of the Americans in Nacogdoches, but in Texas as a whole the annexationists formed the minority party. Generally speaking, the less an American had to lose the more pronounced were his views in favor of separation. Henry Raguet was for independence, but a step at a time. He was more conservative than the leader of his party, W. H. Wharton.

But Houston was aggressive. Less than a year after his arrival in Texas, a party of newcomers was riding along the road between Nacogdoches and the new town of San Augustine. Twice in one day they passed a splendidly mounted horseman

whose polite bows attracted favorable comment, especially from the ktdies. That evening the party inquired at a wayside inn who the civil stranger might be. "That," they were told, "is Governor Houston, and he says there is going to be war in Texas before long and he means to figure in it." 1

Governor Houston was often in San Augustine. On these occasions he stayed at the residence of Phil Sublett one of the founders of the town, and a large speculator in land. Houston had read up on the Mexican land laws, and his legal training was useful to men like Sublett. One night in the autumn of 1833, he arrived at his friend's house very late, and in such an eccentric state that he was unable to mount the stairs. Moreover, he appeared inclined to talk. Sublett thought this might be a good opportunity to get some first-hand information. He asked Houston why he had left Eliza Allen. The question restored Sam Houston instantly. He stormed from the house and called for his horse. 2

But the long shadow had crossed another frontier.

Houston entered upon the practise of law in Nacogdoches and was admitted to appear before the Court of the First Instance presided over by Judge Juan Mora. This brought Don Samuel into professional association with such barristers as Vicente Cordova, Miguel Saco and Francisco Garrero, whose Castillian names had no shadowy counterparts on the alien side of the Sabine. Houston had some good clients: Phil Sublett, Frost Thorn, Jose Durst and others of the local land clique. The new lawyer's best client, however, was the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company.

Organized on a mammoth scale in New York City, the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company marked the entry of big business and politics into the unsettling affairs of Texas. Headed by Anthony Dey, a New York banker, and others whose relations with the Jackson Administration conveyed a reassur-

HALLS OF THE MONTEZUMAS 203

ing implication, the company had no trouble finding money to pay for helpful services. This money was raised by the gale of stock to the favored few and land script to the small fry. The land script was a fraud.

These occupations linked Houston once more with his old friends, the Indians on the Arkansas. There is a tradition among the Cherokees that Houston sent word to Tiana to join him in Texas. This I do not believe, but half-breed Ben Hawkins and the Creek Chief, Opoth-ley-ahola, who had given Houston the fur-collared coat, did come to Nacogdoches on another matter. They agreed to settle their people on lands held by Houston's New York clients, and a part of the purchase price was advanced. In connection with this transaction it will be recalled that the earliest mention of Houston's designs upon Texas contemplated the use of Arkansas Indians as troops to help wrest the province from Mexico.

It appears that Houston carried on these activities without becoming a Mexican citizen. But if the Mexican Government was slipshod about the way foreigners exercised political privileges without becoming citizens, it diligently enforced the statutes withholding ownership of land from those not of the Catholic faith. Austin and his colonists, and other regularized settlers, had gone through the form of affiliation with the Roman Church.

Sam Houston joined the Catholic Church in the last half of 1833 or the first half of 1834, perhaps the latter. It would be interesting to know to what extent he was swayed by expediency and to what extent by Eva Rosine Sterne, the young Louisiana wife of the alcalde.

Investigation of Houston's Catholicism discloses little that one can interpret without aid of conjecture. It is understood that he was a "Muldoon Catholic," implying that he had been inducted into the faith by the learned Padre Miguel Muldoon, a friend of Americans and a practical man whose converts were numerous, and contributions to the ecclesiastical treasury correspondingly so. A Muldoon Catholic Sam Houston may

have been, although in his case the baptismal waters were dispensed by Eva Rosine's confessor, a certain Pere Cham-bondeau, of Louisiana. The church records in which Houston's baptism should appear have been destroyed by fire, but a daughter of Senora Sterne has left an account, based on her mother's recollections. The ceremony took place at the church in Nacogdoches, Mrs. Sterne acting as the convert's "godmother, after which ... he always addressed her as 'Madre Mio.' " 3 One hears from another source that after the church ritual the alcalde gave a party on the porch of his home and opened considerable wine.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that the pageantry of the Catholic service appealed to Houston's color-loving soul, and that certain articles of the creed were a comfort to his buffeted spirit. At the same time, Houston did not remain a practising Catholic very long, if he was ever one. Later he joined his fellow Texas revolutionaries in protests against religious tyranny that looked well in manifestos but had slender basis in reality.

5

Estevan Austin, as he subscribed himself when among his Spanish-speaking countrymen, arrived in Mexico City in mid-July of 1833, half sick after an eleven weeks' journey. He supported Texas's application for a separate state government with a plea vigorous to the point of bluntness. Austin asked that the matter be settled without delay. How could any one, least of all Austin with his reputation for tact and Job's patience, have made such a request of a Mexican official? A part of the answer may be found in a private letter. "I am so weary that life is hardly worth having."

Delay followed delay. The behavior of Santa Anna had begun to disturb his Liberal supporters. The air was filled with uncertainty. Having obtained somewhat less than half of what he came for Austin finally turned his steps northward—to be seized, snatched back to Mexico City and harshly imprisoned.

HALLS OF THE MONTEZUMAS 205

"I do not blame the government for arresting me," he wrote to the people of Texas, "and I particularly request that there be no excitement about it. . . . Keep quiet, discountenance all revolutionary measures or men . . . have no more conventions."

In Texas Sam Houston joined Austin in the counsel of calmness, inveighing against "unrestrained ebullitions of feeling," on the ground, as he afterward explained, that "they would be likely to plunge Texas into a bloody struggle with Mexico, before she was prepared for if." 4

The barrister of Nacogdoches had changed his political views. He was now a moderate—favoring independence, but by one prudent step at a time. "All new States," he later wrote, "are infested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men, who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures. But Texas was absolutely overrun by such men." What Texas needed was a leader "brave enough for any trial, wise enough for any emergency, and cool enough for any crisis." 5 Houston had determined to be that man.

Within a few months resentment over Austin's imprisonment had died away so completely that the luckless man mistakenly believed political opponents in Texas to be conspiring to keep him in jail. This state of affairs suited the projects of Don Samuel, who quietly packed his bag for a journey.

Cincinnati and Tennessee obtained their customary glimpses of him. In the fall of 1834 he was in Washington. Jackson was still trying to purchase Texas and was still embarrassed by his envoy, Anthony Butler, who, failing to advance negotiations by bribery, was trying to stir Texas to rebellion over Austin's arrest.

One evening Houston met Junius Brutus Booth on the Avenue. Adjourning to Brown's Indian Queen Hotel they exchanged mutual accounts of themselves and

"industriously circulated the bottle. Many a loud shout echoed through the hall, and startled watchmen in the street. As night wore on excitement increased until . . . [Booth's] companion exclaimed—

" 'Now, Booth, let's have a speech to liberty—one of those apostrophes to Old Roman freedom.' . . .

"The tragedian rehearsed . . . many of those electric passages in defense of liberty with which the English drama abounds. His friend . . . caught up the words, and with equal force, went through each speech in regular succession. . . . [At length Houston] sprang ... to his feet, and in the tone of one amid battle's din . . . exclaimed,

" 'Now, Booth, once more for liberty!'

"The tragedian ran through ... a tale of Spanish conquest. . . .

"Before him stood at that lone hour, listening with an intensity of thought and feeling which shown in his eyes . . . one who had . . . the ambition of a Pizarro. Quick as thought he . . . repeated the words uttered by Booth. . . . His spirit seemed to take fire; and with an air so strange, so determined, so frightful, that it seemed the voice of one inspired he exclaimed at the close of a masterly rhapsody.

" 'Yes! yes! I am made to revel in the Halls of the Montezumas!' " 8

On another evening in a crowded drawing-room, Narcissa Hamilton, a schoolgirl from Virginia, was presented to General Houston. She curtsied and asked her Cousin Sam if he remembered her. What a question—did Sam Houston ever forget a pretty girl? Then, would he compose a little sentiment to that effect in Narcissa's album? Houston wrote rapidly while the girl's wonder grew that one should be able to concentrate amid such distractions.

"Remember thee? Yes, lovely girl;

While faithful memory holds its seat, Till this warm heart in dust is laid,

And this wild pulse shall cease to beat, No matter where my bark be tost

On Life's tumultuous, stormy sea;

HALLS OF THE MONTEZUMAS 207

My anchor gone, my rudder lost,

Still, cousin, I will think of thee." 7

Narcissa treasured those lines as long as she lived.

Houston visited Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. In New York he met stockholders in the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company, and enjoyed himself socially. With one of these stockholders, Jackson's close friend Samuel Swartwout, Houston had some interesting conversations before he departed for the West.

Little Rock viewed the traveler homeward bound.

"Gen. Houston was one of the most magnificent specimens of physical manhood I have ever seen. ... I first saw him on the public road a few miles out of town. He was riding a splendid bay horse, and his saddle and bridle were of the most exquisite Mexican workmanship and were elaborately ornamented with solid silver plates and buckles in profusion. He was enveloped in a Mexican 'poncho' which was richly ornamented with Mexican embroidery work. When again I saw him on the streets of Little Rock ... it was hard to realize that this elegantly appearing gentleman had voluntarily given up home and kindred and official preferment to join himself to a band of half-civilized Indians, and had adopted their dress . . . and habits of life." 8

In December of 1834 an Englishman arrived at Washington, Arkansas, an out-of-the-way log hamlet thirty miles from the Texas boundary. He wrote:

"I was not desirous of remaining long at this place. General Houston was here, leading a mysterious sort of life, shut up in a small tavern, seeing nobody by day and sitting up all night. The world gave him credit for passing these waking hours in the study of trente et quarante and sept 'a lever; but I had seen too much passing before my eyes, to be ignorant that this little place was the rendezvous where a much deeper game . . . was playing. There were many persons at this time in the village from the States lying adjacent to the Mississippi, under the pretence of purchasing government lands, but whose real

object was to encourage the settlers in Texas to throw off their allegiance to the Mexican government. Many of these individuals were personally acquainted with me; they knew I was not with them, and would naturally conclude I was against them. Having nothing whatever in common with their plan, and no inclination to forward or oppose them, I perceived that the longer I staid the more they would find reason to suppose I were a spy." 9

The stage was being set for the advance upon the halls of the Montezumas. The spear-carriers were jostling to their places in the wings.

CHAPTER XVII

Revolt

In the autumn of 1835 Houston offered for sale four thousand acres of Red River land for twenty-five hundred dollars, one thousand in cash. The money was needed to defray some extraordinary personal expenses, including the purchase, in New Orleans, of a uniform with a general's stars and a sword sash to adorn it Houston possessed a sword—the gift of a* American Army officer at Fort Jessup, Louisiana. These preparations followed an action of the Committee of Vigilance and Safety which had commissioned Sam Houston "Commander-in-Chief of the forces" of the Department of Nacogdoches "to sustain the principles of the Constitution of 1824."

The new Commander scattered through the Redlands an appeal for recruits. "All that is sacred menaced by an arbitrary power!" "War is our only alternative! . . . Volunteers are invited to join our ranks with a good rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition." "The morning of glory is dawning. . . . Patriotic millions will sympathise in our struggles."

General Houston's first call upon the patriotic millions was published in New Orleans. "Volunteers from the United States will . . . receive liberal bounties of land. . . . Come with a good rifle, and come soon. . . . 'Liberty or Death! . . . Down with the usurper!' m

A skirmish took place at Gonzales.

The curtain had risen on the Texas Revolution. In Houston's opinion it had risen prematurely.

2

Eight months previous General Houston had returned from his American tour to find Texas still quiet. Although no longer the toast of Liberals, Santa Anna had confined his suspicious gestures to the country south of the Rio Grande. Austin was out of prison, enjoying the gaiety of Mexico City.

Houston resumed his law practise, the difficult courtship of Anna Raguet and his leisurely plotting. With Austin free factional disputes came to life. This was hastened by the blunder of a relative of Austin who published a private letter from the prisoner, intimating that W. H. Wharton was keeping him in jail. Houston shared Wharton's indignation at the unjust charge, for nominally Houston was still of the Wharton party. But actually he was his own man, and took no one into his confidence. A letter of his to John Wharton:

"Last night, I had the pleasure of passing with your brother, and his company. . . . I . . . remained with them, until this morning; when we parted, for various routs and pursuits—I to my law business and they to the more animating pursuits of speculation.

"From your brother I learned the news of the colony, and of its politicks, for really, I was ignorant of them. ... I heard with singular pleasure, that you were recovering the use of your arm! I had heard of the occurrence of the meeting, but never the particulars. . . . They gratified me much because they were in perfect accordance, with my estimate of you. . . .

"William shewed me his card in answer to Austins ridiculous letter of last August from Mexico. I think he has left the little Gentleman very few crumbs of comfort—I was provoked at his first letter of August, I must confess, that it awakened no other emotion in my breast, than pity mingled with contempt. He shewed the disposition of a viper without its fangs. . . . He aimed at me a few thrusts, but I will wait an interview with him before I make any public expose of . . . his political inconsistencies. . . .

"I am doing pretty well, and certainly, am one of the most steady men in Texas !" 2

Houston permitted Nacogdoches to see him as he described himself to Wharton: a busy lawyer, a steady man pursuing the uneventful tenor of his way. What a contrast with Wharton— duelist, speculator and politician!

Radford Berry had succeeded Adolfo Sterne as alcalde. Houston filed with him the certificate of character required of aliens. "This is to certify that the foreigner Samuel Pablo [sic!] Houston is a man of good moral character and industrious, loving the constitution and the laws of the country, a bachelor without family and generally known as a good man. Nacogdoches 21 of April 1835. [signed] Juan M. Dor." 3

In a jury trial before Judge Mora that lasted a month, Houston defended Jose Lorenzo Boden and Justo Lienda, accused of inciting an Indian attack on white people, and obtained their acquittal. 4 While this case was in progress a young Georgian came to town with a plaintive story. He had put his fortune in a gold mine and the manager of the mine had vanished—G. T. T.—with his employer's investment. The fugitive was overtaken on the outskirts of Nacogdoches, but he had lost the money in a card game. One way or another, those Georgia gold mines were invariably losing propositions.

Lawyer Houston took the luckless proprietor before Alcalde Berry and witnessed the fact that "came and appeared the foreigner Thomas J. Rusk who deposed upon oath, stated and declared that he is a native of the United States of North America . . . his age twenty-nine years . . . that he desires to dwell under the wise and just government which offers the protection of its beneficent laws to honest and industrious men." 5

The simple life. What, therefore, is one to apprehend from a paper like this?

"Sunday evening New York 10th May 1835 "My dear Houston

"Your very interesting letter . . . reminded me of old times and old scenes. ... It was like yourself and therefore thrice welcome."

But to business. There followed a long narration of how the writer had invested "$2750 Dollars" in Texas land and had nothing to show for it. He feared that one Cabrajal had gone south with the money and asked Houston to investigate. "Your description of Texas and the piece of land on Red River had made me too appy as poor old Gen 1 . La f ayette used to say. Why man, my 50,000 acres, if I should ever get them, will be a fortune. Try hard therefore to get them for me." Threaten Cabrajal with "exposure." Say that "a good reputation will be worth more to him than a few thousands obtained by fraud." An engaging observation, since it came from the Collector of the Port of New York, whose sticky fingers were to contrive the great scandal of the Jackson Administration, enriching contemporary language with the verb "to swart-wout," meaning to pilfer.

"Your letter has set everyone crazy. . . . Price is ready to abandon the District Attorneyship for . . . the 'newly iiscovered Paradise.' Ogden Grosveneur & Doct Cooper, yr old

Iriends are all mad to go there, and d m me . . . if I

would not like to pay you a visit in ducking season. By the bye, the 11 Leagues on Red River is due to me, for my sufferings and trouble in that old Burr scrape of mine.—You need

not say anything to the Mexicans about it, but I'm d d . . .

if I dont think they owe me a plantation for what I suffered in that expedition."

Sam Houston to assume the obligations of the defunct Aaron Burr—spicy suggestion, to say the least. But not an impertinent one from Mr. Swartwout's point of view, especially since "If I mistake not Texas will be U States in 5 years, or an independent Empire, when you'l be King. . . . My wife & Daughter are well and desire to be remembered to you. Price will write you in a day or so. Ever Yours Sam 1 . Swartwout." And a postscript: "I am glad to hear that you think [manuscript torn] -ing sober for a while—till you get my land, I hope* I long to have a bottle of old Madeira with you." 6

The five-year program was ruthlessly clipped to five months. Santa Anna lashed out and fell upon the State of Zacatecas, which had refused to accept his dictatorship. He sent his brother-in-law, Martin Perfecto Cos, to attend to Texas. While one lawyer was poring over his briefs in Nacogdoches, another barrister named W. B. Travis with twenty-five men drove a Mexican garrison from Anahuac and proposed a march upon Bexar, the remaining garrison town, before Cos could reinforce it. There was no march to Bexar, however, and Travis was widely denounced in Texas. Only when Cos issued a stupidly phrased order for the military arrest of the offender did popular opinion rally to his side.

On September first Stephen F. Austin arrived in Texas, and all eyes turned toward him. War or peace? Austin had been studying Santa Anna at close range for two years. "War," he said, "is our only recourse." Texas stood united—and unprepared.

3

In response to Houston's call to arms, Thomas J. Rusk organized a company at Nacogdoches. New Orleans also responded. "Americans to the Rescue!" shouted -the Bee. There followed mass meetings, speeches, public subscriptions. Adol-phus Sterne thrilled an audience with an offer to buy rifles for the first fifty recruits. The New Orleans "Grays" formed themselves and claimed the rifles. Houston's appeal spread like fire in powder. Men formed up in Georgia, in Mississippi, in Tennessee, Kentucky, Cincinnati and New York, where Sam Swartwout unloosened the strings of some heavy purses.

Houston could not tarry in East Texas to contemplate this gratifying response amid which even Miss Anna had thawed. She tied his sword sash, snipped a lock of his hair and sent her soldier to fight for Texas. He was not, however, to fight on a battle-field as yet. His first stop was at Washington on the Brazos, where he fell in with a party of delegates bound for San Felipe to attend the meeting of a Consultation that had

been summoned to coordinate the manifold activities. Houston also had been chosen a member of this body. He found his fellow delegates in a state of excitement and of many minds. A letter came from Austin, commanding the army, requesting the East Texas forces. Houston has stated that he gave the last five dollars he had "in the world" to a rider to carry the order that sent Rusk and the other Redlanders to the scene of war. Then the General and the other delegates took up the march to San Felipe.

The main body of members to the prospective Consultation seem to have been on the ground when Houston arrived, but were unorganized and had accomplished nothing. The most striking figure present was Lorenzo de Zavala, Governor, Senator, Cabinet officer and Minister to France under various Mexican Governments, and hero of the revolution that had won freedom from Spain. This passionate friend of liberty had repudiated Santa Anna and fled to Texas, but he could do little with a band of distracted Americans. Neither could Houston. At length, however, he placed himself at the head of thirty of the members and set out for Austin's camp, a ride of one hundred and sixty miles.

The army was then five miles from San Antonio de Bexar, whither Cos had arrived with reinforcements. Invited to surrender, General Cos had crisply declined, and Austin's camp was a spectacle of divided counsels. In desperation Austin is said to have offered the command of the army to Houston who refused it in the interest of harmony. A dispute arose as to whether the Consultation members should stay and fight or depart and legislate. The army thought they should fight, but Houston and Austin addressed the troops on the necessity of forming a government. They carried their point by a vote taken on the field.

On November 3, 1835, the Consultation again sat down in San Felipe. Sam Houston appeared before it clothed not in his new uniform, but in his old buckskins—the garb of a citizen performing a citizen's duty of building an Anglo-Saxon state.

"My impressions of the consultation unfavorable," noted a passer-by. "Some good men but I feel sick at the prospect. Introduced to Bowie—he was dead drunk; to Houston—his appearance anything but respectable."

The man in buckskins dominated a delicate situation. As sincerely as any one, Sam Houston desired Texan independence, or annexation to the United States. He felt, however, that this result could be achieved only by a military victory over Santa Anna. To air such advanced views now would only alienate the support of Liberal Mexicans like Zavala. Houston challenged the Whartons on the question of independence. A hot fight followed, but Houston won, and the Consultation adopted a provisional decree of independence under the Constitution of 1824.

A constitution was written and a civil administration organized with Henry Smith, of Brazoria, Governor, and James W. Robinson, of Nacogdoches, Lieutenant-Governor. A legislative body called the General Council was created. Stephen F. Austin, W. H. Wharton and Dr. Branch T. Archer were authorized to borrow a million dollars in the United States. With one dissenting vote Sam Houston was elected commander-in-chief of the Armies.

4

Confused reports came from the Army. Houston heard that Austin had been displaced by Jim Bowie. This was an error, but Austin was having his troubles, most of which came from his own side rather than from Cos who hesitated to show himself outside of the fortifications. A plague had swept Bowie's beautiful wife and two children into the grave, leaving the lion-hearted Jim almost insane with grief. Abandoning his property he had plunged into the Texas struggle, drinking to excess and quarrelsome, but still a leader and a fighter. Marching ninety men from Austin's camp, he whipped four hundred of Cos's cavalry at Mission Concepcion, and crowned the victory by throwing up his commission in a tiff.

S16 THIS KAVEN

Houston established contact with the army by means of a confidential letter to James W. Fannin. Fannin was one of those personal mysteries not uncommon to early Texas. A Georgian about thirty-one years of age, educated at the United States Military Academy under the name of Walker, he had appeared in Texas as a slave-runner, in funds and a free spender. When the clouds began to gather in the summer of 1835, Fannin impetuously espoused the cause of the extremists and scattered his money liberally. At Concepcion he shared the command with Bowie. Perhaps it was his military training that attracted Houston, who offered Fannin appointment as inspector-general of the army with rank of colonel.

Houston did not think that Cos could be beaten without artillery. Therefore "wou'd it not be best to raise the nominal seige,—fall back on Labehai [La Bahai, better known as Goliad] and Gonzales . . . furlough" most of "the army to Comfortable homes, and when the Artillery, is in readiness, march to the Combat with sufficient force, and at once reduce San Antonio! . . . Recommend the Safest course! . . . Remember our Maxim, it is better to do well, late: than never!" 7

In reply Fannin dispatched two letters within a few hours of each other. "With regard to falling back ... I must admit it to be a safest course." On the other hand "I am fully convinced that with 250 men, well chosen & properly drilled . . . that the place can be taken by storm." 8

Upon his own future Fannin dwelt at greater length, crestfallen at the offer of a mere colonelcy. "I . . . write . . . in haste and thank you for the tender ... of Quarter [master] Genl." In great haste, it would seem, since the tender was of inspector-general. "I have not had time to consult my friends or the wishes of the Army. ... I would prefer a command in the line if I could be actively engaged." Were not two brigadier-generals to be selected? "If so ... I respectfully request your influence for one . . . well satisfied that I can fill either of the posts, better than any officer, who has jet been in command. —Entertaining this opinion I will at

least tender my services. . . . Others may succeed over me by intrigues . . . [but I shall] not quit camp to seek office; . . . prefer the post of danger; where I may seek the enemy & beat him." 9 "Liberty & Texas—our wives & sweet hearts." 10

With these communications before him Houston pressed the appointment of inspector-general upon Fannin, and sent him to take charge of the principal rendezvous for volunteers that were streaming in from the United States.

The Commander-in-Chief paid little attention to the army before Bexar and pursued his better-late-than-never policy by sitting down at San Felipe to evolve a military establishment designed to withstand the wear and tear of protracted campaigning.

Like any frontier community Texas had always been able to improvise a fighting force equal to brief emergencies. Our history teems with the exploits of such "armies"—thrown together in a week, to campaign for a month and go home. The turbulent troops before Bexar were all for having a battle at once or for going home. Houston, the old Regular, did not feel that such a force could win for Texas. With too strong a preference for formally drilled troops and too little confidence in raw volunteers, he continued his arrangements for a regular army and volunteer regiments, to be carefully equipped and trained before they took the field. He clung to the idea of Indian allies, ordering these stores from New Orleans: "1000 Butcher knives 1000 Tomahawks well tempered with handles . . . 3000 lb chewing tobacco (Kentucky)." 11

Events outmarched the organizer. The day this requisition went forward the siege of Bexar was at an end. The army was in the town, fighting from street to street.

On leaving for the United States, Austin had transferred the command to Edward Burleson, an old Indian fighter who,

like Houston, feared to attack. But the army was tired of waiting. "Who'll go into Bexar with old Ben Milam?" was the droll proposal of that veteran plainsman. Three hundred and one men volunteered and the town was stormed in the face of artillery fire. Milam was killed, and the command passed to Francis W. Johnson. On the fifth day of battle Cos with fourteen hundred men surrendered. They were permitted to march back to Mexico under parole not to bear arms against Texas, and once more there was not a Mexican soldier north of the Rio Grande.

Texas went wild over the victory, and said that the war was over. Burleson, who had said that Bexar could not be taken without artillery, resigned and went home. Johnson was elected commander. Houston, who had said that Bexar could not be taken without artillery, published a call for troops in which he said that the war had just begun. "The 1st of March next, we must meet the enemy with an army worthy of our cause. . . . Our habitations must be defended. . . . Our countrymen in the field have presented an example worthy of imitation. . . . Let the brave rally to the standard." 13

This proclamation failed of the effect intended. The recruits flocked to the leaders who had covered themselves with glory at San Antonio de Bexar. That victory had been a blow to Houston's prestige, and a movement to displace him as commander-in-chief took form.

This had its beginning with James Grant, a Scotch surgeon whose mines below the Rio Grande had been seized. He had taken advantage of Austin's caution to spread discontent among the troops, promising them wealth and glory in an invasion of Mexico. This talk so appealed to the troops that only the assault upon Bexar had forestalled a march on Mata-moras. Doctor Grant was wounded in that action, which tightened his hold upon the soldiers. He won over the new Commander, Johnson, and the two concerted their efforts with members of the General Council of the civil government. The project was painted in glittering tints—Liberal Mexicans ri«-

ing to greet the invaders—the rich spoils of the old cities of Tamaulipas and Neuvo Leon—the fruitful country—the salubrious climate: a veritable souvenir hunt to the Halls of the Montezumas. The Council succumbed to the seductive spell.

Houston opposed the Matamoras campaign. He pointed out that irrespective of party, the Mexicans invariably united to repel foreign invasions. He deprecated the idea of using the army to recover the confiscated estates of Doctor Grant. The real seat of his opposition was deeper than either of these objections, however. Houston knew that Mexican pride would attempt vengeance for Bexar. He wished to direct all efforts to creating an army capable of meeting Santa Anna and smaslv ing Mexico's power north of the Rio Grande. Governor Smith sided with Houston, but Smith and the Council had never pulled together and the gap between them was growing daily.

While the battle at Bexar was in progress, Jose Antonio Mexia had appeared in Texas and offered his sword in defense of liberty. General Mexfa was an enemy of Santa Anna and had fled to New Orleans. There he had won the confidence of a company of American filibusters awaiting a ship to join Houston in Texas. When six days at sea Mexia announced to these volunteers that their destination was Tampico, where General Mexia had decided to gather some laurels on his own account. Instead of welcoming Mexia, Tampico shouted "Death to Foreigners!" The General escaped to a small boat, but most of his followers were captured and shot.

Sam Houston saw excellent reasons for declining to avail himself of the services of this soldier. Mexia appealed to the General Council which voted him ten thousand dollars and other assistance for an invasion of Mexico. Governor Smith vetoed the appropriation, denouncing Mexia as an unprincipled adventurer. The Council repassed the ordinance over Smith's veto, but with a modification that wounded the sensibilities of the General who declined to imperil his "military reputation" in the interest of Texas, and left the country.

But Grant and Johnson remained at Bexar, the idols of the Army, while enthusiasm for their Matamoras project swept the country. Members of the Council conspired with the Bexar leaders, and on December fifteenth made the first move looking to the elimination of Houston. His headquarters were transferred from San Felipe to the out-of-the-way hamlet of Washington. Houston, however, delayed his going, and with Governor Smith formed a counter-project to prevent the Army from eluding their influence. Houston directed Bowie to organize an expedition and "proceed on the route to Matamoras." Bowie was also to keep open the near-by port of Copano. Word went to New Orleans for American volunteers to land at Copano and concentrate under James W. Fannin at Refugio Mission and at Goliad.

By these means Houston expected to place an effective body of troops under Bowie and Fannin, whom he trusted, and to steal a march on Grant by starting Bowie to Matamoras first. Should the feint appear promising of results, it was in Houston's mind to appear in person at the head of the army and avail himself of the glory. These dispositions also took account of the expected invasion by Santa Anna in the spring.

6

So far, so good. On Christmas Day Houston removed his headquarters to Washington. Inspector-General Fannin was instructed to extend the Commander-in-Chief's "best salutations to all volunteers," and to keep them quietly in camp. "The volunteers may rely on my presence at Copano at the earliest moment, that a campaign should be undertaken for the success of the army and the good of the country." This done, Fannin was to join Houston at Washington. 13

In place of Colonel Fannin, Sam Houston's next caller of consequence was a courier from Bexar with news that Grant was on the way to Matamoras at the head of two hundred men, including the crack New Orleans Grays with Adolphus Sterne's

new rifles. This upsetting intelligence was from Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph C. Neill, a Houston man left behind with eighty sick and wounded whom Grant had stripped of medicines.

The Commander-in-Chief wrote Governor Smith an excited letter. "No language can express the anguish of my soul. Oh, save our poor country! . . . What will the world think of the authorities of Texas ?" Nothing remained but for Houston to buckle on his sword and pursue the miscreant who had stolen the army. "Within thirty hours I shall set out ... I pray that a confidential dispatch may meet me at Goliad. ... I do not fear,—I will do my duty !" 14

On the night of January 14, 1836, Houston overtook Grant at Goliad. Styling himself "Acting Commander-in-Chief" Grant had gleaned Goliad of horses and provisions and his men were in high feather. Houston did not press the point of his authority, believing he would be in a better position to do so at Refugio Mission on the seacoast, whither Grant was bound. There Houston expected to meet a large concentration of loyal troops under Fannin and to find a supply depot.

The situation at Goliad would have been fraught with less anxiety had not Houston received from Neill the grave tidings that Texas was invaded. The Mexicans were on the march to attack Bexar. Houston had not reckoned on an invasion before another two months. Neither he nor any one else had credited Santa Anna with ability to move an army in the dead of winter over the storm-swept desert that lay between Saltillo and Bexar. Texan leaders one and all had been too busily spying on one another to inform themselves of the enemy's movements.

Houston acted resolutely. Bowie was at Goliad. He had missed Houston's order to anticipate Grant with a gesture toward Matamoras, so that detail of the Houston-Smith counter-strategy had miscarried also. Houston started a handful of men to Bexar under Bowie with instructions to "demolish . . . the fortifications . . . remove all the canon . . . blow up the Alamo and abandon the place. I would myself have

marched to Bexar . . . but the Matamoras rage is so high, that I must see Col Ward's men." 15

Ward commanded a well-equipped battalion that had just arrived from Georgia. Houston had entrusted its reception to Fannin. But what was Fannin doing? Houston found posted in Goliad a proclamation signed with Fannin's name, calling for volunteers to march on Matamoras and promising that the "troops should be paid out of the first spoils taken from the enemy." 16 At best this represented an act of grievous indiscretion. A looting raid would not win over the Mexican Liberals.

Hence the importance of pressing on to Refugio and getting hold of Ward's men and the supplies. The invasion had changed everything. Grant must be forestalled at any cost.

The "Acting Commander-in-Chief" took up his march for Refugio, and the regular Commander-in-Chief rode along with him, badgering the men in a good-natured way over the obstacles that lay in the path to Matamoras. In real emergencies Houston usually was the master, and he could always make himself agreeable to soldiers. His persuasions had begun to weigh with Grant's men when they rode into Refugio on the night of January twentieth.

At Refugio Sam Houston found & disquieting situation. Ward was not there. Fannin was not there. Not a pound of supplies was on the ground.

The following morning Grant's partner in intrigue, Johnson, galloped in with an explanation of these mysteries. The General Council had deposed Governor Smith. It had superseded Sam Houston as Commander-in-Chief, making James W. Fannin the actual head of the army. Fannin was in possession of Ward's battalion and of the supplies. Matamoras would be taken, Mexico smitten with fire and the sword.

"I had but one course left to pursue," Houston wrote to Governor Smith. "By remaining with the army, the council

would have had the pleasure of ascribing to me the evils which their own acts, will, in all probability, produce. . . . I regard the expedition, as now ordered, as . . . [divested] of any character save that of piratical . . . war." 17

Houston washed his hands of the business and took his leave, but not until he had done two small things that are important to history. He harangued Grant's and Johnson's men on the perils of a march to Matamoras and left them murmuring. He announced his candidacy as delegate from Refugio to a new convention that was to meet in Washington on the first of March to reorganize the government.

Houston left Refugio at night, accompanied by his personal aide, Major George W. Hockley. He rode in silence "troubled by the most painful suspense—whether to withdraw once more from the treacheries and persecutions of the world, and bury himself deep in the solitude of nature, and pass a life in communion with the Great Spirit, and his beautiful creations"—-or whether "to boldly mark out a track for himself" and "trample down all opposition." 18 For all the mauling that he had received at the hands of the world, Sam Houston retained the sensitive nature of his boyhood. He was not a happy warrior, but a brooding man in the stormy quest of repose.

The evening of the following day, Houston resolved upon a course. He told Hockley he would mark the new track. He would set Texas free.

At San Felipe Houston talked over things with Governor Smith who still made some pretentions to authority. Smith went through the form of granting his military commander a furlough until March first, and Houston disappeared among the Indians. In his calculations for the subjugation of Texas, General Santa Anna had omitted little. On the west and the south he advanced with armies. On the north and east were Indians who had their own grudges against Texas. Santa Anna's agents were stirring the blood of the clans who numbered two thousand men at arms when Sam Houston took his place at the council fire of The Bowl, War Lord of the Texas Cherokees.

CHAPTER XVIII The Retreat from Gonzales

On the twenty-seventh day of February, 1836, the urbane Colonel William F. Gray, of Virginia, rode into Washington on the Brazos. "Disgusting place," he wrote in his diary. "About a dozen cabins or shanties constitute the city; not one decent house in it, and only one well defined street, which consists of an opening cut out of the woods. The stumps still standing."

In New Orleans Colonel Gray had met Austin and the other commissioners. The city was enthusiastic and the commissioners had borrowed two hundred thousand dollars. After this, Texas itself was disappointing. The visitor was in San Felipe during a brawl between Smith and the Council, which had left Texas without army or government. But San Felipe professed indifference; if Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande he should never return alive. A week later Santa Anna was well across the Rio Grande, and San Felipe was packing to go eastward. Colonel Gray made an early start.

In Washington he had expected to find Houston. He bore a letter for him from Stephen F. Austin. Colonel Gray found many other people in Washington who were looking for Houston, who, as far as any one knew, was still among the Indians.

Washington was a whirlpool of confusion. The vanguard of the flight before the invasion was arriving. Delegates to

THE RETREAT FROM GONZALES 225

the Convention that was to meet in three days had begun to appear. There were not roofs enough and many slept under the trees. Residents were joining the eastward march. Texas was beginning to perceive that Houston's elimination from the army had failed to produce the results anticipated. In any event where was he now? His name somehow inspired confidence. Colonel Gray thought the Convention must make quick shift of its business or starve, since Washington was down to a corn-bread and fat-pork ration.

On February twenty-eighth a courier on a hard-ridden horse galloped into town with what has been called the most heroic message in American history.

"Commandancy of the Alamo "Bejar, F'by 24th 1836 "To the People of Texas & all Americans in the world: . . . am beseiged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword ... if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot & our flag still waves proudly from the wall. / shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible. . . . victory or death.

"W. Barret Travis "Lt. Col. Comdt." 1

The crowd took up a collection for the courier and sped him on.

"The Acting Governor, Robinson, with a fragment of the Council is here," noted Colonel Gray. "He is treated coldly and really seems of little consequence." Houston was the man of consequence now. Refugio had chosen him as a delegate to the Convention.

On February twenty-ninth it rained. The Convention would form on the morrow. To what purpose? Cheerless weather; leaderless confusion; a sense of helplessness in the face of impending danger. ... A sudden shout in the stump-studded street snatched the throng from its brooding. A rush of men converged about a figure on horseback. Houston had come.

"Gen'l Houston's arrival has created more sensation than that of any other man. He is much broken in appearance, but has still a fine person and courtly manners; he will be forty-three years old on the 3rd [2nd] March—looks older." 2

Thus Colonel Gray who lost no time introducing himself.

2

Next day a norther swept in and the temperature fell to thirty-three degrees. In a fireless shed the Convention worked through the night and, among other things, wrote a Declaration of Independence which was adopted without a dissenting vote and immediately signed on March 2, 1836. Sam Houston was the John Hancock of the occasion, his flowing autograph as bold as ever. Eleven of the signers were natives of Virginia, nine of Tennessee, nine of North Carolina, H\e of Kentucky, four of South Carolina, four of Georgia, three of Mexico (two of Texas and one of Yucatan), two of Pennsylvania, two of New York and one each of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ireland, Scotland, England and Canada. The birthplaces of three are not obtainable.

The approval of the declaration took place on Sam Houston's forty-third birthday. Only eleven of those who signed it were his seniors, the average age being just under thirty-eight. Delegate Houston sent his felicitations to Madre Mio—Citi-zeness Rosine Sterne of Nacogdoches—enclosing a pair of beautiful earrings. She wore them each succeeding March second to the year of her death.

On March fourth the Convention elected Sam Houston

THE RETREAT FROM GONZALES 227

Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Republic, and on Sunday, March sixth, while Washington was eating breakfast an express dashed in with tidings from the Alamo. The town hastened to the Convention Hall to hear the news, which proved to be the last lines Barret Travis was to give to the world.

"The spirits of my men are still high, although they have had much to depress them. We have contended for ten days against an enemy whose number are variously estimated at from fifteen hundred to six thousand men. . . . Col. Fannin is said to be on the march to this place . . . but I fear it is not true, as I have repeatedly sent to him for aid without receiving any. ... I hope your honorable body will hasten on reinforcements. . . . Our supply of ammunition is limited."

Robert Potter of the honorable body moved that "the Convention do immediately adjourn, arm, and march to the relief of the Alamo." Sam Houston characterized Mr. Potter's motion as "madness." The Convention must remain in session and create a government. Houston would leave for the front. He would find troops and interpose them between the enemy and the Convention. And "if mortal power could avail" he would "relieve the brave men in the Alamo." Houston did not mention that the brave men in the Alamo were there because his order to blow up that death-trap had been disregarded.

When he finished speaking, the Commander-in-Chief strode from the hall and mounted his horse—a superb animal, richly caparisoned in the Mexican fashion. The fine uniform had succumbed to the recent tribulations, however. The General wore a Cherokee coat and vest of buckskin, but from his broad hat streamed a martial feather. The gift sword was at his side and in his belt a pistol. His high-heeled boots were adorned with silver spurs of Mexican workmanship, with three-inch rowels in the pattern of daisies. Followed by the faithful Hockley and three volunteers, one in a borrowed suit of clothes, the protector of the Republic rode to meet General Santa Anna and his well-appointed army of seven thousand men.

3

Houston started for Gonzales—a hundred odd miles westward and seventy-six miles from the Alamo—sending a courier ahead to order Fannin to join him. The Commander-in-Chief did not doubt that this officer would be glad to abandon his pretensions to the supreme command. Poor Fannin! His eyes were open to the incredible folly in which the pursuit of ambition and the conspirators of the Council had enmeshed him. He sat at Goliad, miserable and repentant, writing pathetic letters, asking to be extricated from his predicament that he might redeem himself as an obedient "company officer."

The departing gestures of Houston at Refugio had broken up the Matamoras expedition. Fannin had marched his command to Goliad and thrown up what he characteristically christened Fort Defiance. Grant and Johnson, stouter of heart though less troubled by the pricks of conscience, had started to Matamoras regardless, but when their followers dwindled to a hundred men they, too, were obliged to call a halt.

A short distance from Washington, Houston separated himself from his companions, dismounted and held his ear to the prairie. He returned with the announcement that he feared the worst for the Alamo. The firing there had ceased, he said. Otherwise he could have detected it from the earth, an accomplishment learned from the Indians.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of March eleventh, the Commander-in-Chief reached Gonzales. In a camp in the bend of the river on the edge of town were three hundred and seventy-four men under Moseley Baker, with whom Houston lately had quarreled. They possessed two days' rations and two cannon that would shoot. A third piece of artillery was in John Sowell's blacksmith shop. There was no news from the Alamo.

Houston started to form the men into companies, but was interrupted by the sudden shrieks of women in the town. Two Mexicans had arrived with the story that the Alamo had fallen and that the defenders had been horribly slain. Houston de-

THE RETREAT FROM GONZALES 229

nounced the report and arrested the Mexicans as spies. Actually, he believed their story and dispatched fresh orders to Fannin, still rooted at Goliad, to blow up his fort and retreat.

In two days the army grew to five hundred men. Houston organized them into a regiment under Burleson, the Indian fighter, and instituted a program of drill calculated to get the men in hand for a reception of the unnerving news Houston knew he could suppress little longer. Already he had written Henry Raguet a fairly correct account of the battle with particulars, as he had them, of the deaths of Travis and Bowie. "Col Fannin should have relieved our Brave men. . . . He had taken up the line of march . . . [but] owing to the breaking down of a wagon . . . returned to Goliad, and left our Spartans to their fate!

"We are now compelled to take post on the east side of the Guadeloupe, and . . . watch . . . the enemy. ... I [will] if possible prevent all future murders [of] our men in forts." The campaign was taking shape in the mind of Sam Houston. "We cannot fight the enemy ten to one, in their own country." Therefore retreat to East Texas and induce the enemy to divide his forces in pursuit. "I have no doubt as to the issue of the contest. I am in good spirits!—tho not Ardent!!!"* Miss Anna please note.

This letter was barely on its way when Deaf Smith, a famous plainsman and hunter, rode into camp with three actual survivors of the Alamo: Mrs. A. M. Dickinson, her fifteen-months-old baby, Angelina, and Travis's negro body-servant, Joe.

Mrs. Dickinson, who was young and attractive, had been taken to General Santa Anna's apartments after the battle. She held her head high. Her husband had perished on the walls. Her clothing was soiled with the blood of a wounded boy from Nacogdoches whom she had tried to save from the bayonet. General Santa Anna received her with perfect courtesy, and petted little Angelina. Placing a horse and his personal servant, Ben, at her disposal, he asked Mrs. Dickinson

to convey the compliments of General Santa Anna to Senor Houston, and to assure him that the story of the Alamo would be the story of all who were found in arms against Mexican authority. Santa Anna said the rebels would be spared only if they laid down their arms forthwith.

Panic took the town and the army. The Mexican advance guard was declared to be in sight. Houston dashed among the soldiery, shouting to the assembly in his booming voice, and telling them to bring in the deserters who had fled. But twenty got away and their wild tales brought pandemonium to Texas.

Houston quieted the little town where thirty women had learned that they were widows. The army's baggage wagons were reserved for their use. Sinking his artillery in the river, Houston burned what equipage the men could not carry on their backs. At eleven o'clock the army, followed by one ammunition wagon drawn by four oxen, began its retreat.

"In the name of God, gentlemen," cried an old man, "you are not going to leave the families behind!"

"Oh, yes," drawled a voice from the ranks, "we're looking out for number one."

But Houston had left a mounted rear-guard under Deaf Smith to send the refugees in the wake of the army.

The night was warm and pitch dark. A mile east of the town the trail entered a forest of post-oak. The men sank ankle-deep in the sandy soil and expressed themselves freely on the General's order making them infantry. It was a serious compromise with dignity for a Texan to fight on foot. An hour before daybreak there was a halt. The troops dropped in their tracks and slept. At dawn the refugee train came up, and the women helped the soldiers get breakfast.

The meal was interrupted by a series of explosions. Santa Anna's artillery! Houston calmed them. The rear-guard was blowing up the poisoned liquor citizens of Gonzales had left fo r Santa Anna.

THE RETREAT FROM GONZALES 231

Fifty recruits came during the halt, but seeing the refugees, twenty-five departed to look after their families. The army emerged from the wood on the prairie, "as green as emerald," wrote a boy in the ranks, "and the sun, which had been obscured by clouds, shone out . . . greatly exhilarating our spirits." Houston rode alongside the column, pointing his finger and counting. "We are the rise of eight hundred strong," he said, "and with a good position can whip ten to one of the enemy." 4 This exaggeration of their numbers served to cheer the men.

Houston felt them in need of cheering. A courier had brought a message from Fannin who refused to retreat. 5 Houston surveyed the little column "which seemed but a speck on the vast prairie." "Hockley," he said, "there is the last hope of Texas. We shall never see Fannin nor his men." 6

At sundown the army bivouaced on La Baca River. Houston found a man asleep on guard, ordered him shot and rejoined Hockley before the embers in the fireplace of a deserted cabin. The Commander-in-Chief whittled a stick and meditated. The only military force, properly speaking, in Texas was with Fannin. Grant and Johnson had been wiped out by Urrea whose dragoons would fall upon Fannin next. Houston tossed a handful of shavings on the fire. "Hockley," he said, "take an order," and dictated instructions to Major William T. Austin to hasten to the coast, find some artillery and rejoin the army on the Colorado in twelve days' time. Houston meant to fight.

On the next day the Commander-in-Chief heard that a blind woman with six children had been passed by. He sent a detachment back thirty miles to bring them in. From Houston the poor woman learned that her husband had perished at the Alamo. The widow and her brood tramped with the army to the Colorado, which was reached at Burnham's Crossing on March seventeenth. Terror-stricken settlers were strung for miles up and down the river, frantic to get across. They had abandoned their home at the words of alarm spread by the Gon-

zales deserters. Some had stopped to throw a few belongings in a wagon, others had left dinners in the pots. Wives called out their husbands' names, mothers searched for their children. Houston rode among them saying that every civilian would be safely over the river before a single soldier crossed.

The last of the troops were crossing when the Commander espied two women seated on a log. One was an Alamo widow, and both were utterly destitute. Houston gave them fifty dollars and found them places in a wagon. These scenes affected the army and many volunteers left. There was nothing to restrain any one except the personality of Sam Houston.

But losses were more than made good, and with six hundred men, he went into camp on the east bank of the Colorado to await definite word as to Fannin, reinforcements and artillery. Discipline was maintained. The guard found asleep on La Baca had not been shot, but the army understood that his escape was a narrow one. This made pickets so vigilant that one detained the Commander-in-Chief for identification. Houston scattered couriers to the eastward to quell the panic that paralyzed his efforts to form an army capable of giving battle. He wrote the government that "if only three hundred men remain on this side of the Brazos, I will die with them or conquer." 7