He began his new duties with ardor. But constant anxiety and the hardships of prison life had left him weak and delicate. The unfinished room where he worked was without fire; he was seized suddenly with pneumonia, and after a short illness he died (December 27, 1836).
The Father of Texas was but forty-three years old. His life had been noble, useful, and unselfish, and his death was a public loss. His body was conveyed in the steamer Yellowstone to Peach Point on the Brazos, near Columbia. There, in the presence of the President and his cabinet, the officers of the army and navy, and a large concourse of citizens, he was buried with military honors.
Mirabeau B. Lamar.
The first regular Congress had a hard task before it. The people of Texas were in favor of annexation to the United States. But a strong faction in that nation, though willing to acknowledge Texas as an independent country, was strongly opposed to receiving another slave state. The young Republic was therefore obliged to stand alone.
There was a large public debt, but no money in the treasury. Mexico still laid claim to her rebellious province, and it was necessary to maintain an army to repel invasion, and a navy to defend the coast. The Indians were troublesome. The civil law, in the confusion and disorder of the war, had become almost a dead letter.
This was a tangled skein, but Congress set to work with hearty good will to unravel the threads. The legislature provided for the public debt and other state expenses by issuing land scrip (government paper entitling the holder to so many leagues of land).
First Capitol of Texas. At Columbia (1836).
County and magistrate courts were organized; a Supreme Court was formed, and the Spanish code of laws was displaced by the code used by the United States. The soldiers instead of their pay received permission to go home on long visits to their families. Some vessels were bought for the navy, and commissioners were sent to the different Indian tribes to make treaties of friendship.