Sam Houston, one of the most illustrious political figures of Texas, was born on March 2, 1793, the fifth child (and fifth son) of Samuel and Elizabeth (Paxton) Houston, on their plantation in Rockbridge County, Virginia. When he was thirteen years old, his father died; some months later, in the spring of 1807, he emigrated with his mother, five brothers, and three sisters to Blount County in Eastern Tennessee, where the family established a farm near Maryville.

Rebelling at his older brothers' attempts to make him work on the farm and in the family's store in Maryville, Houston ran away from home as an adolescent in 1809 to dwell among the Cherokees, who lived across the Tennessee River. Between intermittent visits to Maryville, he sojourned for three years with the band of Chief Oolooteka, who adopted him and gave him the Indian name Colonneh, or "the Raven." Houston viewed Oolooteka as his "Indian Father" and the Cherokees much as a surrogate family. He henceforth maintained great sympathy toward Indians.

At age eighteen he left the Cherokees to set up a school, so that he could earn money to repay debts. After war broke out with the British, he joined the United States Army as a 20 year-old private, on March 24, 1813. As part of Andrew Jackson's army, he fought at the battle of Horseshoe Bend, where he received three near-fatal wounds, but won the attention of General Jackson. Jackson thereafter became his benefactor and in return, Houston became a staunch Jacksonian Democrat.

Following his difficulties with Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Houston resigned from the army on March 1, 1818. That year, Houston began practicing law in Lebanon, Tennessee. With Jackson's endorsement, he became adjutant general of the state militia through appointment by Governor Joseph McMinn. In late 1818, Houston was elected attorney general of the District of Nashville, where he took up residence. After returning to private practice in Nashville by late 1821, he was elected major general of the state militia by his fellow officers.

Houston's rapid rise in public office continued in 1823, when, as a member of Jackson's political circle, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives from the Ninth Tennessee District. As a member of Congress, he worked mightily, though unsuccessfully, for the election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1824. In 1825, he returned to Congress for a second and final term. In 1827, Houston was elected governor of Tennessee at the age of 34.

On January 22, 1829, he married nineteen-year-old Eliza Allen of Gallatin, Tennessee and soon after, announced his bid for re-election to the governorship. After eleven weeks and amid much mystery, the marriage ended. Extremely distraught, Houston abruptly resigned from his office on April 16 and fled west across the Mississippi River to Indian Territory, bringing an end to Houston's Tennessee phase and possibly, an eventual run at the presidency of the United States.

He made his way to the lodge of Oolooteka in what is now day Oklahoma to live once again in self-imposed exile among the Cherokees, this time for three years. Among the Indians, he initially drank heavily and secluded himself from contacts with white society. He quickly became active in Indian affairs, was granted Cherokee citizenship, and under Cherokee law, married Diana Rogers Gentry, an Indian woman of mixed blood.

Gradually reinvolving himself in the white world, he made various trips East. On the evening of April 13, 1832, on the streets of Washington, Houston thrashed William Stanbery, United States representative from Ohio, with a hickory cane. The assault resulted from a perceived insult by Stanbery over an Indian rations contract. Houston was soon arrested and tried before the House of Representatives. The month-long proceedings ended in an official reprimand and a fine, but the affair catapulted Houston back into the political arena. Leaving Diana and his life among the Indians, Houston crossed the Red River into Mexican Texas on December 2, 1832, and began perhaps the most important phase of his career.

Houston saw Texas as his "land of promise", a place for bold enterprise, rife with political and financial opportunity. He quickly became embroiled in the Anglo-Texans' politics of rebellion. He served as a delegate from Nacogdoches at the Convention of 1833 in San Felipe and in September 1835, he chaired a mass meeting in Nacogdoches to consider the possibility of convening a consultation. By October, Houston had expressed his belief that war between Texas and the central government was inevitable and on March 2, 1836, Texas adopted its Declaration of Independence. Two days later, Houston received the appointment of major general of the Texas army, with instructions to organize the Republic's military forces. Despite problems with infantry discipline, Houston and his men defeated the Mexican forces of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna at the decisive battle of San Jacinto on the afternoon of April 21, 1836. At San Jacinto, Sam Houston became forever enshrined as a member of the pantheon of Texas heroes and a symbol for the age.

Riding the wave of popularity as "Old Sam Jacinto," Houston became the first regularly elected president of the Republic of Texas, defeating Stephen F. Austin. His first term lasted from October 22, 1836, to December 10, 1838, during which the town of Houston served as the capital of the Republic. During this term, Houston sought to demilitarize Texas and avoid trouble between white settlers and Indians. In late 1836, Houston sent Santa Anna, then a prisoner of war, to Washington to seek the annexation of Texas to the United States. Although Houston favored annexation, his initial efforts to bring Texas into the Union proved futile, and he formally withdrew the offer by the end of his first term. After leaving office because the Constitution of the Republic of Texas barred a president from succeeding himself, Houston served in the Texas House of Representatives as a congressman from San Augustine from 1839 to 1841.

On May 9, 1840, Houston married twenty-one-year-old Margaret Moffette Lea of Marion, Alabama. A strict Baptist, Margaret served as a restraining influence on her husband and especially bridled his drinking. They had eight children: Sam Houston, Jr., (1843), Nancy Elizabeth (1846), Margaret (1848), Mary William (1850), Antoinette Power (1852), Andrew Jackson Houston (1854), William Rogers (1858), and Temple Lea Houston (1860).

Houston succeeded Mirabeau B. Lamar to a second term as president from December 12, 1841, to December 9, 1844. During this administration, Houston stressed financial austerity and drastically reduced government offices and salaries. Although many Texans clamored for action, President Houston deftly managed to avoid war with Mexico after the two Mexican invasions of 1842. After the first incursion, Houston directed that the government archives be moved from Austin, an order that ultimately resulted in the "Archive War," in which residents of Austin forcibly prevented removal of the files.

Following his succession to the presidency by Anson Jones, Houston became one of Texas's two United States senators, along with Thomas Jefferson Rusk. Houston served in the Senate from February 21, 1846, until March 4, 1859. As senator, Houston emerged as an ardent Unionist, true to his association with Andrew Jackson, a stand that made him an increasingly controversial figure. He stridently opposed the rising sectionalism of the antebellum period and delivered eloquent speeches on the issue. His career in the Senate was effectively ended when, in 1855, the Texas legislature officially condemned his position on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which he opposed because it allowed the status of slavery to be determined by popular sovereignty, a concept he saw as potentially destabilizing to the nation.

As a lame-duck senator, Houston ran for governor of Texas in 1857, but was defeated by the state Democratic party's official nominee, Hardin R. Runnels. Predictably, the state legislature did not reelect Houston to the Senate; instead, in late 1857, it replaced him with John Hemphill. Out of the Senate, Houston ran a second time for governor in 1859. Because of his name recognition, a temporary lull in the sectional conflict, and other factors, he defeated the incumbent, Runnels, and assumed office on December 21.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, the clamor of discontent in Texas prompted Houston to call a special session of the state legislature. Despite his adamant opposition to slavery, Texas withdrew from the Union, a move Houston acquiesced in order to avoid bringing civil strife and bloodshed to his beloved state. But when he refused to take the oath of loyalty to the newly formed Confederate States of America, the Texas convention removed him from office on March 16 and replaced him with Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark.

After leaving the Governor's Mansion, Houston at least verbally supported the Southern cause. Against his father's advice, Sam, Jr., eagerly joined the Confederate Army and was wounded at the battle of Shiloh. Houston moved his wife and other children in the fall of 1862 to Huntsville, where they rented a two-story residence known as the Steamboat House, so called because it resembled a riverboat. On July 26, 1863, after being ill for several weeks, he died in the downstairs bedroom of the Steamboat House, succumbing to pneumonia at age 70. Dressed in Masonic ceremonial trappings, he was buried in Oakwood Cemetery at Huntsville.

Excerpted from: "HOUSTON, SAMUEL." The Handbook of Texas Online. <http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/HH/fho73.html> [Accessed Thu May 20 10:48:47 US/Central 2004 ].