| General Sam Houston. San Jacinto and independence. |
Happily for the Texans they had now found their proper leader, General Sam Houston. Many of the descriptions of this hero are caricatures. Of those which approach the truth, that given by Senator Benton is perhaps most nearly correct. Benton was the lieutenant-colonel of the regiment in which Houston served during the war with the Creeks; and said later of his old comrade, "I then marked in him the same soldierly and gentlemanly qualities which have since distinguished his eventful career; frank, generous, and brave, ready to do, or to suffer, whatever the obligations of civil or military duty imposed; and always prompt to answer the call of honor, patriotism, and friendship." He was a Virginian by birth, but an early resident of Tennessee, and had been Governor of Tennessee before attaining his thirty-fifth year. He appeared in Texas in 1833, and in 1835 was made commander of the Texan army. It was chiefly his skill and bravery, which effected the expulsion of Cos and his army in the winter of 1835-36. After the disasters at the Alamo and at Goliad, he, in command of the remnants of the Texan army, retreated slowly before Santa Anna's comparatively large force, until Santa Anna made the blunder of dividing his army by the swollen waters of the San Jacinto, when he turned suddenly upon the Mexicans, and inflicted upon them the crushing defeat known as the battle of San Jacinto, in which the Mexican loss was double the number of Houston's army, some sixteen hundred men, including Santa Anna himself among the captives. The part of the Mexican army which had not crossed the river retreated precipitately from Texan soil, and the new state had won its independence.
| Texas as a constitutional Republic. |
The battle of San Jacinto was fought on April 21st, 1836. The convention had finished the constitution more than a month before. In September following, General Houston was elected President of the new republic, and the constitution was almost immediately put into operation. This constitution legalized the existence of slavery in Texas, as a constitutional right of the masters, prohibited the residence of free negroes within the State without special official permission, and interdicted the importation of negro slaves, except from the United States.
| The recognition of the independence of Texas. |
A little more than a month after the battle of San Jacinto, the legislature of Connecticut set the ball in motion for the recognition of the independence of Texas by the Government of the United States. On May 27th, 1836, the two Houses of that body passed a resolution instructing the Senators, and requesting the Representatives, in Congress from Connecticut "to use their best endeavors to procure the acknowledgment, on the part of the United States, of the independence of Texas." Evidently the Yankee Commonwealth considered itself, in an especial degree, the motherland of the new state. The founder of the colony, which had now become an independent state, was one of its children, and it hastened to anticipate Virginia, the birthplace of Houston, in owning its offspring. A careful perusal of the whole of this Connecticut document will certainly leave the impression upon the mind of the impartial reader, at this day, that the people of the North then considered the Texan revolution to have been provoked by Mexican misrule and barbarism, and to have been fully justified in political ethics as well as by practical success.
On June 13th, Senator Niles, of Connecticut, presented the Connecticut memorial to the Senate, and it was immediately referred to the committee on Foreign Relations. On the 18th, Mr. Clay, the chairman of the committee, reported a resolution: "That the independence of Texas ought to be acknowledged by the United States whenever satisfactory information shall be received that it has, in successful operation, a civil government capable of performing the duties and fulfilling the obligations of an independent Power." The resolution was adopted by the Senate, on July 1st, without a dissenting voice.