SAM HOUSTON.
1793=1863.
General Sam Houston, first President of Texas, was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, but his widowed mother removed in his childhood to Tennessee and settled near the Cherokee Country. Here he was much with the Indians and was adopted by a chief named Oolooteka, who called him Coloneh (the Rover).
In 1813 he became a soldier in the Creek war and was almost fatally wounded at the battle of Tohopeka, or Horse-shoe Bend, Alabama. In 1818 he decided to study law and went to Nashville, where he became quite successful as a lawyer and soon received political honors, being elected member of Congress in 1823 and governor of Tennessee in 1827.
In 1829 he left Tennessee for the West, spent three years in Arkansas among the Cherokees who had emigrated thither, his old friend Oolooteka being one of them; and in 1832 went to Texas, with which State his after life is connected. He was made Commander-in-Chief of the Texan forces in the struggle for independence against Mexico, and by the battle of San Jacinto, 1836, he put an end to the war, and in the same year he was elected first President of the Republic of Texas. He was elected again in 1841 after Lamar’s administration; and when in 1845 Texas became a State in the Union, he entered the United States Senate where he served until 1859. He was governor of Texas from 1859 to 1861 and then retired to private life. He is buried at Huntsville.
He was ever a warm friend to the Indians; he was opposed to secession, and took little interest and no part in the Confederate war, except by allowing his oldest son to enter its service.
His life by Rev. Wm. Carey Crane, President of Baylor University, gives a graphic account of a most interesting and independent character; and it contains also his literary remains, consisting of State Papers, Indian Talks, Letters, and Speeches.
CAUSE OF THE TEXAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
(From a Letter to Santa Anna, 1842.)